The Simple Way I'm Making Money Online With AI

0:00Okay, so if I'm just being honest here, I can't help but notice that there are a lot of videos here on YouTube where creators are talking about all these great AI business ideas that they have. Yet, very few of them are actually showing how they themselves are using AI tools to make money. But I have I have case studies on this channel showing how I built my one person AI business to over $1,000 a day. So, I know how to actually do it. I know how to use AI to automate creating products or services, getting free sales and traffic, and crucially identifying low competition niches to target. And that word automate

0:36is key. Because, as I'm sure a lot of you can relate, when I first started this side hustle, I was already working over 40 hours a week. So, I've had to figure out how to automate as much as possible to be able to stack it as an additional income source on top of what I already do and earn. So, let me show you how I do this so that you can copy my AI tool workflows. But first, I know from my analytics most people to my channel are new and haven't seen my

1:02previous case studies on my AI business. So, I'll quickly explain what it is and how it makes money so that all of us are on the same page. Basically, it's pretty simple. I just create fun print on demand products like clothes that I design using AI tools, which I then sell on Etsy for a profit. My idea to start the store came one day when I was on Etsy looking for funny, clever dog clothing. And while I did find some good shirts that I was willing to buy, they were about dogs in general, there were no good, clever shirts about specific dog breeds such as huskys or corgis that

1:33I liked and was willing to actually buy. And when I noticed this, I realized I had discovered this a gap in the market. This is when there is demand for a product or a service or even say a YouTube channel, but it either hasn't yet been made or there is not enough of it to meet the demand. And so, of course, I decided to fill that gap myself. I used AI LLM chat bots like Gemini, ChatGpt, and Claude to brainstorm fun clothing slogans. And I used AI tools to take those ideas and then turn them into actual designs. And then I came to print on demand apps like

2:08Printify, which have a huge catalog of blank products that you can customize and sell, such as t-shirts, by uploading the designs you create onto them, and then listing them in your store for a markup price. So, I of course listed them in my new Etsy store. And well, since Etsy already gets hundreds of millions of visits each month, I got my traffic to my listings by using AI chat bots like Claude to optimize my products for Etsy's algorithm to be able to piggy back off of this traffic already coming

2:35into the website anyway. And it worked. Within two weeks, I had my first two sales and well, it has snowballed from there. And so now, every week, Etsy quietly sends me a check while my store runs on its own semi-passively as an extra income source for me. Because the way that it works is that each time somebody buys one of my products, the Printify print shop will print my design onto the product, package it up, and ship it out to my customer while I get to keep the difference as profit. So, yeah, it's mostly hands-off now that it's set up and running. And if you'd like to learn even more about how it

3:07works, you can download a copy of my free ebook, My One Person AI Business Unlocked. You can find a link to download my free ebook in the video description below. But yes, now that everyone is on the same page, let's discuss the three steps that I followed to first choose a business idea that I thought would work well as a second side income source, automate it, and then importantly, how I got free traffic to it. So, let's start with step one. You of course need to choose whatever business or side hustle that you're going to start. And for me, I chose to start one that I already had an unfair

3:40advantage in. Because here's the thing, right? If you're trying to stack a second income on top of an already busy work schedule like I was, you kind of need to make it as easy for yourself as possible, you know. And for me, I knew I had an unfair advantage when it came to starting a store about dog themed merch. And that's because I myself love dogs. I was already buying dog themed products for myself anyway. And so, because I myself am a customer in this niche, it made it easier for me to have fast success in it. Because here is a question for you. Yes, it is super easy

4:11for anyone to come up with a t-shirt design and go to AI and get it to make 50 different images to pick from to sell. But here's a question. You can't upload all of these to Etsy. So all of these 50 images, they are different. Which one is the best? Which one would customers like the most? And actually, we can make this question even more tricky because AI image generators let you make modifications to the images that it makes. So, here's the new tougher question for you. Which of these designs in its current form maybe is not the best, but if we were to make a

4:45change to it, we could turn it into the best design. It's tricky, isn't it? And so, that is where my unfair advantage comes in because, well, since I myself am a customer in this niche, I get to use myself as a yard stick. I get to ask myself, hm, which of these images do I like the best and which one would I buy if I saw it printed onto a product? And so what I actually ended up doing was I took two of the pictures and I combined the best elements of each together into a single design that was super cool. But this would have been so much harder and

5:17honestly much slower if I myself didn't already understand what customers in the niche wanted. And so even though I poked fun earlier at how there are so many business idea videos on YouTube, I don't actually think that these are bad at all. In fact, I think that they can actually be super helpful, which is why I myself make them. Because while watching these, you can learn about lots of different business ideas and find one that works well for you with your unique advantages. For example, I recently showcased in a video a very cool side hustle people are doing where they create these AI fashion models on

5:49Instagram. They use AI video generators to create models that are wearing and showcasing clothing that is up for sale on Amazon. And then they make money by posting affiliate links to where people can go and buy them on Amazon. It's a great strategy. Although, if I'm being honest, long-term, this would not be a good side hustle for me to start because I myself don't really keep up with fashion trends. You know, long-term, I would find it difficult and boring to pick trendy clothes for my models to wear. But for someone that did keep up with fashion, well, this could be a really fun and even easy side hustle for

6:23them to start. And actually, this leads me onto my bonus tip. And that is I truly believe that starting a successful business is even easier if you can identify a problem that people are having and solve it. Because here's the thing, right? When I first launched the store, I got my first two sales pretty fast. And so, the reason why I think I got my first sales so quickly was because I did this. I found a gap in the market. People wanted more options for

6:48clothing related to specific dog breeds. And so, I made it for them. I filled the gap in the market, which is great because you think about it, right? When I first launched my store, I had no reviews and I had no social proof. So, if I had done what I see most other beginners honestly do, which is just copy t-shirts in already successful Etsy stores, then why would someone come and buy from me when they can just go and buy from the established Etsy store that has reviews and has social proof? So, I had to give them a reason to buy from me and take a chance on me. I had to create

7:21something new that they wanted. And filling a gap is actually a pretty straightforward way to do that. And there are lots of ways to fill gaps. Maybe people want more videos in a particular niche or genre here on YouTube. You can make those videos for them. Or maybe local businesses in your city want or need people to offer a particular marketing service. Well, you can go out there and you can offer that service to them. However, the next question you're probably thinking is this. Okay, Sarah, but how can I find a gap in the market to fill? And that's a good question because it's true. I did

7:51get a bit lucky when I stumbled on mine. So rather than wait until you get lucky like me, you can always just go and make your own luck instead. Take whatever niche or business idea you picked in step one and ask an AI chatbot to do deep research online and find discussions from people within the niche talking about what problems they are having. So let's say that you had decided that you would be great at making digital products for teachers back in step one. Well, you could get an AI to research problems that teachers are currently struggling with, and then you could come up with some sort of

8:21product, video, or app designed to solve it. So, then onto the next step. But first, can I just ask a quick favor? If you are enjoying this video, please consider giving it a like. Because lately, there has been a bit of what I've begun to call an AI witch hunt. People are clicking on AI tutorials like mine just to leave comments like this, which is why it does mean a lot to me when people leave supportive comments on the channel or do click like. So, genuinely, thank you so much to everyone who supports the channel. But yes, once you have your business idea, we can move

8:52on to step two and create an AI workflow for your new business or side hustle. And of course, whatever your workflow ends up being will depend entirely upon what business idea or side hustle you have decided to start. But here's my workflow just as an example. First, I use Chat GPT Claude or Gemini to help me brainstorm niche clothing ideas and slogans. Then next, I use Google's advanced image generator, Nano Banana Pro, to make the images for me, which I often access through Higsfield. This is an all-in-one media generator that has all of the most popular image and video models included in it, which I find

9:26pretty useful since it lets me pay for just one subscription to be able to access all of these. Then next up, once I have my design created, I'll upload it into the AI powered graphics app, Canva, and I'll use some of the features included in the pro version of Canva to make a few tweaks to the design to turn it into a print ready file. So, first I'll use it AI background remover to get rid of the white background because if I don't do that, the image will print like this onto a t-shirt instead of like this. Then next, I'll use Canvas AI upscaler to upscale it into high

9:58resolution so that it will print crisp and clear onto products I sell. And then I just download and export it in two times resolution as a PNG file with the background set to be transparent. And that's it. I now have my design ready to be uploaded and sold onto print on demand products like clothing, mugs, stationery, things like that. And yes, before anyone asks, later on in step three, I will be showing you how I use

10:21AI to get free traffic and sales, too. But for now, this is my workflow that I've developed for my business. And again, yours might be entirely different from mine, depending on what business or side hustle you've chosen to start. And if you'd like some help creating your own custom workflow, you can always come to your favorite AI chatbot, whether that is ChatGpt, Gemini, or Claude, and ask it to help you pick the best apps and tools to include in it. Explain what your new side hustle is that you're building out a workflow for and also make sure to explain any limitations that you might have that it will need to

10:53consider. For example, if you're new to AI and you need it to find tools that are beginner friendly and easy to use, note that. And if you have a limited budget to spend each month on subscriptions, note that too. That way you can build out a custom workflow that is best for you. And then next up, you can consider doing an optional bonus step, which is taking your AI workflow and then automating it by plugging it into an AI agent like Claude Code. And while it's not necessary to do this, I do think that it's especially helpful for those of us out there that already

11:26have a busy full-time work schedule. Because you think about it, right? If you can create an AI workflow like we did in step two, then hand over this workflow to an AI agent to do it for you, it can literally work for you and help you make money while you are at your job or even while you sleep. It is truly gamechanging. However, I know from polling viewers that a lot of people are confused. What even is an AI agent and

11:53how is it different from an AI chatbot? And that's a good question. So an AI LLM chatbot is the standard chat GBT, Gemini or Clawude AI bots that you can access through your internet browser. You can give it a specific task and it will do it for you with the tools that it has built in. It is reactive. It will react to whatever you tell it to do. But AI agents are more advanced. These have access to and can use an AI LLM like chat GPT, Gemini or Claude. But they also in addition to this have access to your computer and whatever tools that you give it. And it can use those tools

12:27and complete multiple tasks in a row by itself autonomously because an AI agent is not reactive. It is proactive. And the most popular AI agent right now is probably Claude's own AI agent, Claude Code. And trust me, as I'll show you, even though it's called Claude Code, it can do a lot more than just code. To use it, you need a paid Claude plan. And to download it and install it on your computer, then you'll be able to open it up as an app on your computer. And when you do, make sure to switch to code mode, which is agent mode. Then next, once I had it open, I needed to install

13:01and give it access to all of the apps that I had inside of my workflow. And of course, I didn't need to give it access to the first tool in my workflow, which was Claude, since obviously it already had access to Claude, but I did need to give it access to two other tools. Hicksfield so it could use it to generate my designs and then Canvas so that it could use the tools in it to turn the images that it made with Hicksfield into actual print ready files. And giving Claude access to these tools is actually surprisingly pretty simple. There are three main ways that you can do it. One way is to do a search

13:33for your app in the connector section of Claude Code and see if there's an official connection there like there is for Canva. If there is, you can add it in and then log into your account using the connector to give Claude code access to it. However, sometimes official connections can be quite limited with what they let Claude do with them. And the Canva one is particularly restricted. Like it doesn't let Claude code access the AI tools inside of Canvas, such as the magic background remover tool, which is the one that I want to use. However, this didn't actually bother me because, as you'll see shortly, there is a workaround to

14:05this that I like to do, which I will show you how to do, too. But yes, either way, there are also some apps like Higsfield which have what is called a CLI installation method. All you have to do is copy the CLI installation prompt that Higsfield has pre-prepared for you and paste it into Claude Code and click enter. It will then install Higsfield into Claude Code for you, which is by the way super cool because as I said earlier, Higsfield has all of the best image and video models built into it. So if you give Claude Code access to Higsfield, it can make pretty much anything for you on autopilot. It's kind

14:37of like supercharging Claude code. Plus, there is a third alternative way that you can give Claude access to the tools that you use, and that is that there is also a free Chrome extension for Claude that you can install. When you do, you can open up a window on your Chrome internet browser, and then click to open up Claude within it. Now, Claude Code can access and use this window autonomously by itself. So, I opened up a window with access to my Canva account. That means now that my Clawude Code agent is able to use all of the tools inside of my Canva account, including its background remover tool,

15:08which as I said is not actually included in the official connection app. Nice. Oh, and by the way, just a quick question. Would anyone out there enjoy seeing a video where I do a full step-by-step tutorial on how I install Claude Code, install my apps, and then create these automated workflows with it? because if there is enough demand, I can absolutely go out there and make this video. But I don't want to make it

15:30if people will find it boring, you know? So, it's up to you, dear viewers. But yes, either way, now that I've got these apps and tools installed with Claude Code, we can put it to the test with a quick fun experiment. You see, while I thought this corky design was super cute as is, I couldn't help but think, wouldn't it also work really great with cats as well, there is just one catch, though, when it comes to cat products, and that's this. Cats come in a huge variety of colors. You've got white cats, tabby cats, black cats, gray cats, you name it. And as you can probably

16:01guess, most cat owners are only willing to buy cat merch if it looks like their cat. Like an owner of a white cat is not going to buy a cute cat mug that features a tabby cat, are they? They will only buy the mug if it features a cute white cat just like theirs. So, if I want to reuse this design and modify it for cat owners, then I need to create different variations of it featuring different types of cats. And so, here's how I automated that process. First, I got Claude Code to help me modify my Corgi design into a tabby cat design. To do this, I got it to use Nano Banana

16:36Pro, which it was able to access through my Higsfield installation. It made three variations for me to pick from. And out of these, this one was my favorite. So, next up, I opened up an internet browser window in Canva and turned on the Claude Code browser extension sidebar and I came to Claude Code and I really put it to the test. I asked it to take this design and now make 20 variations each featuring popular cat colors. And I also asked it to modify the text colors on

17:02the design too to match the cat colors. And I told it to use Canva to make the background transparent, upscale it, and then save all of them with my specific export settings of having it set to be a transparent PNG file saved at two times resolution. And then that's it. I left Claude code alone to work its magic. And work its magic, it did. It went through, created all of the images, and customized them based on my request. And then it popped each image into Canva, and it used the tools in it to modify it by accessing Canva in my internet browser. The entire process took Claude

17:33Co just over an hour to do, but the final result was well worth it because check this out. It made these for me just like I requested. It is super cool. Doing this myself could have taken me hours. But now I can literally just ask Claude Code to make these for me, go to sleep and wake up. And then the next

17:51morning, boom, it's done. It's insane. So then on to the next step. But first, all of this talk about Claude Code can't help but remind me of today's video sponsor, me. Yes, because you see, there have been a lot of shady YouTube sponsors, like the FDX scandal and the Honey scandal. And so, frankly, I am [music] very picky about who I let sponsor my videos. And if I cannot find a sponsor for one that I trust, then I will just sponsor it myself. And so I'm sponsoring my video today to quickly remind you that if you would like more information on my AI business and how it

18:24works that you can download a copy of my free ebook, My One Person AI Business Unlocked. You will find a link to download it for free in the video description [music] below. Plus, for those that would like additional tutorials, I've also created my video course, The Ecom Clubhouse. This includes step-by-step video tutorials on my AI tool workflows, including my new series on how I'm using Claude Code to automate the process of creating print on demand designs and [music] products to sell. And as a special bonus, I will give all new readers who sign up today a special optional one-time coupon that lets you join my video course, the Ecom

18:58Clubhouse, for 7 days for just $1. The chess sponsorship segment over. Now, back to the tutorial. And next up is step three, getting free traffic. And the way I do this is surprisingly simple. I just piggyback off of Etsy's AI powered algorithm. Because you see, as long as you're posting your products or content to a major website or social media platform, it's usually already getting hundreds of millions to billions of views each month that you can just

19:24take advantage of. Like you take Etsy. This website is super popular. It is the 67th most popular website in the world. Every month it gets 400 to 500 million visits. That's a lot of people coming to Etsy looking to buy things, right? The question though is this. Given that there are lots of other people also posting their products to Etsy, how can you get those 400 to 500 million people to see your products instead of your competitors? It's a good question. And so, let me show you something. As each user browses through Etsy, it will based on what you've already liked and bought before recommend products to you that it

19:57thinks that you might like to buy that it selects using an AI powered algorithm. So, you can guess what my traffic strategy is, right? When I upload my products to Etsy, I optimize them for Etsy's AI algorithm so that it will show users my products instead of my competitors in the recommendations. And well, it works. This is my main traffic source that I'm using to get my sales. In fact, my first two ever sales

20:23came directly from this form of traffic. And it's pretty cool. The key though is that to optimize your products for the algorithm, you really need to know how the algorithm works. And so let me show you the algorithm is basically split into three distinct phases. Each product posted on the platform will go through this three-phase algorithm. The first phase is the test impression phase. And this is arguably the most important of all of them to get right. Because you see, let's say, for example, that I decided that you know what, I'm just going to post this design as a print on

20:53demand mug and list it for sale on Etsy. Well, when I do, Etsy's AI will look over the mug that I uploaded and analyze its pictures, title, description, tags, and it will try to guess who out of their tens of millions of active customers might want to buy it. Then, it will pick a small test group and boost my product by putting it in front of them on places like their homepage, their app, or their search results. I call these test impressions because that's what this boost is. It's a test to see if when showing your product, will the small group of users that it's selected actually engage with it, such

21:26as clicking on it or even better, buying it. Then next up, the product will move into phase two, the results. And really, this is exactly what it sounds like. The algorithm will now analyze whether the test was successful. If it wasn't and it didn't get enough engagement, the test will fizzle and Etsy will stop artificially boosting the product. But on the flip side, if it does pass this test, then the mug will move on to phase three, snowball expansion, which is again exactly what it sounds like. At this point, the Etsy algorithm will now switch to analyzing the people that did engage and try to identify other similar

22:00customers in its database to them. And it will then expand the test group to include those customers. And if it passes that test, then it will expand out to even more customers, creating a snowball viral effect. It's pretty cool. And also, I think it's pretty fair because Etsy will generally test all products, including products in both new stores and established stores with this algorithm, meaning everyone has a chance for their products to go viral and sell if they're actually good, even if you don't have any social media followers or reviews. And there is a technical name for a fair algorithm like this. It's called a multi-armed bandit algorithm,

22:34if you're curious. But yes, pretty much all of the major platforms these days such as YouTube, Tik Tok, Google, LinkedIn, Amazon KDP, and Instagram use fair algorithms like this, not just Etsy, which is great. However, there is one downside, and that is that if the AI algorithm gets it wrong and chooses the wrong group of people to test your product with, then the test will fizzle and it will flop. So something that I think is very important to do is to use AI chat bots like Chat Gvt, Gemini or Claude to help you optimize your products or content to make it easy for this algorithm to figure out who to show

23:10it to. So for Etsy, I like to upload a photo of what I'm going to list and sell and ask the AI to create a listing title, description, and tags optimized for AI recommendation algorithms. And look, it can do that for me. Easy. Nice. [music] So then if you would like to learn about even more ways that people are using AI tools to start side hustles to help inspire you of course to find the right AI business idea for you then check out my next video here on screen

23:38and I will see you in the next video. [music]