I Automated My $1k/Day AI Side Hustle With Claude (here's how)

0:00Okay, no exaggeration here, automating my AI business with Claude Code has been gamechanging. Yep. Because as my regular viewers know, I have my own AI business that earns me passive money every day, which I've now been able to automate using Claude code. I can now literally type in a prompt, go to bed, wake up the next day, and it will have created for me a brand new product overnight while I've been asleep that's now ready for me to list and sell for a profit in the morning. It's insane. And yet most people have no idea what Claude Code really is, let alone how to make any

0:33money from it. Which is a shame because even though it sounds scary and intimidating to use, I think that with the right tutorials, it can actually be very simple, even for non- techy beginners. So, let me show you the step-by-step process I use to install it and the prompts I'm using with it so that you can copy them, too. And as

0:52usual, we've got lots to get through. So, thank you to Higsfield for sponsoring today's video. And now, let's just jump straight into it. And first up, since I know from my analytics that most people watching my channel are brand new and haven't seen any of my previous business case study videos, I'll quickly explain what my AI businesses so that we're all on the same page here. And the short version is I have an Etsy store. I started it when I was on Etsy one day looking for fun dog clothes to buy. And while I found generic dog t-shirts that I liked, I couldn't find any fun, clever t-shirts

1:21that I wanted to buy about specific dog breeds such as huskys. Essentially, you could say that I discovered this, a gap in the market. I found something that people wanted, which was fun dog breed specific clothing, but that they couldn't get because it didn't yet exist. So, I used AI tools to make them to fill this gap. And these days, I use Claude to research product ideas, and I use Nano Banana Pro through Higsfield to create clothing designs. And I use Canvas AI to turn these designs into print ready files which I upload onto print on demand products using print on demand apps like Printify which have a

1:55huge catalog of blank products that you can customize and sell such as t-shirts. So I just upload my designs onto t-shirts and then I list them for sale in my Etsy store for a markup price optimized for the Etsy algorithm so that I can get free traffic from people looking for say tusky t-shirts to buy on Etsy. And then each time somebody does buy one from me, my print shop will automatically see the order. It'll print my design onto the product, package it up, and ship it out. And they'll charge my card on file, the base print and shipping cost, and I will keep the markup price difference as profit. It's

2:26a very hands-off business that day-to-day is very passive, which I love. However, there was admittedly quite a bit of admin work in creating the designs and then editing them and uploading them onto products within Printify. But now, as I'll show you, Claude Code has automated this entire process from start to finish. So, let's

2:46do it. Then, let's automate my business. And to do that, we will first need to install the Claude Code AI agent onto our computer. Because you see, unlike the standard normal AI version of Claude, which you can just access through your internet browser, the AI agent version of Claude, which is Claude Code, does need to be installed on your actual computer or laptop. And this confuses a lot of people because why is Claude any different from Claude code anyway? And what even is the difference between an AI and an AI agent? They are good questions, right? So, let me answer them. First, let's take a look at

3:20Claude. This is just the normal version of Claude that you can access online. This is your standard AI, otherwise known as an LLM chatbot. You ask it a question and it'll answer it for you. Or you can even give it a task to do like say asking it to write you a video script and as long as it has the tools built in to be able to complete this task, it'll do it for you. Claude is reactive. It responds to what you tell it to do. Whereas AI agents like Claude Code are more advanced. You give an AI agent a task that will require it to

3:50complete multiple steps to finish and it will be able to do it. So, for example, later on in this video, I'm going to ask Claude Code to generate 10 t-shirt designs for me, then turn them into print ready files with Canva, and then upload each of them onto t-shirts on Printify optimized for free Etsy search engine traffic. And it will do all of this by itself autonomously from just

4:11one single prompt. It's astonishing. However, to be able to complete these tasks, it needs to be able to easily access these tools, apps, and computer files just like I normally would if I was doing this myself manually, which is why we need to download and install it on our computer. And luckily, downloading it is simple. You can literally just do a Google search for Claude Code and then open up the downloads page for it. Then click the download button and it will download and save it onto your computer. Then next, find the folder on your computer that it downloaded to. So for me, I literally have a folder called downloads on my

4:45computer where things that I download get saved to. And as you can see, it downloaded into that folder. So I just clicked on the Claude app and started the installation process. And outside of needing to give it permission to make changes to my computer, which all apps that you install will ask you. I didn't have to do anything. And then once it was finished installing, it just asked me to sign into my Claude account. And that was it. Claude Code was now installed on my computer and accessing it once installed is super easy. All you have to do is do a search for the Claude Code app on your computer. Click it and

5:18it will open up. And when it does, you'll see two modes. There is the standard chat mode and the code mode. You can switch between these two modes at any time. And that's it. Claude Code is now installed. Nice. So then let's now move on to step two and give Claude Code access to these tools, apps, and websites that we want it to use to complete tasks for us. And so, of course, for me, as part of my t-shirt workflow that I'm automating with Claude Code, I'm going to need to give it access to three tools and websites. One of them, of course, is Hicksfield. And I

5:47don't just say that because they did kindly agree to sponsor today's video. It's genuinely a tool that I find myself using pretty much every day because it is the biggest, most popular all-in-one media generator. And it's super convenient because if you sign up and you just buy one subscription to it, you'll get access to all of the top video and image AI models that are included in it. Then all you need to do

6:09is give Claude Code access to Higsfield. And then Claude Code will be able to use all of these image and video models without you having to install and pay for them individually. It's kind of like supercharging Claude Code because you're giving it access to a huge arsenal of creative AI tools. Plus, I'll also need to give it access to Canva, which is my personal favorite AI powered graphics design app. And I'll also need to give it access to my print on demand app, Printify. And there are two ways to give it access to tools. One way is that you can look to see if a tool is available

6:39in clause connector database. These are connectors that are powered by what is called model context protocol technology, otherwise known as MCPS. And you can access this database by switching into code mode and then clicking on customize. And in the settings, open up the connectors option. Now you can do a search for a connector for an app that you want to install. So for example, I came and did a search for Canva and as you can see a connector is available for it. So I can click to connect it and when I do it'll open up Canva in my internet browser and ask me to sign in and confirm that I want to

7:11connect it which I said yes to. And now if I come back to Claude Code you'll see that the Canva connector is now installed. Yay. So MCPs are one way, but there is another way that you can connect apps to your Claude code AI agent, and that is through a different form of technology called CLI, which stands for command line interface. Not all apps and tools and websites have a CLI connection available. But if they do, it's better to use this as an installation method with claude code because it uses a lot less clawed tokens, which means then that it saves you usage and money. And luckily,

7:43Higsfield's developers have made a CLI connection. Just open up the NCP and CLI page in the menu and then choose the CLI installation method and make sure Claude Code is selected and then just copy the CLI prompt and then paste it into Claude Code and click enter. Now it will install Higsfield along with its skills into Claude Code for you. Just make sure that you do sign into your Higsfield account when it prompts you to. So yeah, that's how you install tools and app into Claude Code. However, what if you want to use a tool that doesn't have an

8:15MCP installation or a CLI installation? Well, that's actually okay because we're now going to move on to step three and install the free Claude Chrome extension, which will give Claude Code access to any website or app that we want. It's super powerful. So, if you don't have Google's internet browser Chrome installed on your computer, go ahead and install it now. Although chances are most people watching this will have it installed since it is by far the most popular internet browser in the world. Then inside of Claude Code in the connector section, make sure that Claude and Chrome connector is installed and it's turned on. Then you can do a

8:50quick search in Google for the Claude Chrome browser extension and then open it up. Then you can click the button to download the extension and it will download the extension and add it into your browser for you. And once it's done, just confirm that you want to connect Chrome to your Claude account. And then that's it. It's installed. To access it, just open up the extensions button in your browser. You'll see that the Claude button is there. Click to pin it. And now the Claude icon will be easily visible. And as I said, this is very powerful because what I can now do is I can come to any website, tool or

9:22app that I can access with an internet browser. So for example, you can see I've logged into my Canva account here, right? Well, what I can do is I can click to open up the Claude browser extension and agree to give it permission to use this browser tab. And now check it out. I can come back to Claude Code and ask it to make me a project in Canva. So I said to it, hey, please make me a large square project in Canva with a rainbow background. And then I let it do its magic. You can actually watch it using your internet browser if you like and are curious at

9:52what's going on. You'll see that there is an orange glowing cursor that is clicking things. Well, that is Claude code. I watched it as it made a new square project for me and added in a rainbow background picture and resized it to fill the whole blank canvas just like I asked it to. Pretty cool, right? So, if there is no connector for an app tool or website that you want to use as long as you can open it up within Google Chrome, then you can just give Claude access that way. And actually sometimes even if there is a connector into cla code like there is for Canva, you might

10:26still want to instead give it access to it through your internet browser. Because remember how earlier I installed Canva into cloud code using that MCP connection. Well, if we actually open it up, we can see which features the Canva developers have chosen to include in their connection. And while a lot of Canvas features have been included, my personal favorite feature, their AI

10:48background remover tool, isn't in here. So, as you'll see, I will actually give Claude Code access to Canva using Chrome anyway. But yes, either way, now the real fun begins because now I'm going to show you how I run an automated workflow for my business using Claude Code. So, first up, in a new code chat, you will want to choose a folder on your computer for the Asia to save any files that it needs to. Then you'll want to choose how much permission you'll let Claw Code

11:14have to make changes to your computer. Now, most people will probably start out by choosing to set it to auto. But if you want, you could choose to bypass all permission requests if you like. And that is the full Claude code autopilot mode. Then next, you want to open up in Chrome any websites or apps that you want to be able to give it access to. So for me, as I said earlier, my business is that I create print on demand products to sell using print on demand apps like Printify, which have a wide

11:41variety of blank products in it to sell. So I logged into my account and then came to my personal favorite t-shirt and its catalog, the ballet canvas 3001, and opened up the Claude Chrome extension on this page. And then I also logged into my Canva account and I opened up the Claude Chrome extension on here too. And then I came back to Claude Code and I prompted it. First of all, I told it in my prompt where it can find an image. I had saved on my computer that I had already created as a reference template for it to use. Because you see, for me, one of the most efficient ways that I

12:11have found for creating print on demand designs to sell is to use a method that I'm calling repurposed reference templates. Basically, what I like to do is I like to find a popular design, such as this print on demand t-shirt for sale here on Amazon, which you can see has sold over 300 shirts in the past month. Then, I'll repurpose it with a new niche. And so when I first saw this, I thought, you know what? This could be great repurposed for dogs, too, not just cats. So I created a similar repurposed image myself using my favorite image generated, Nana Banana Pro, inside a Higsfield. And out of the images that I

12:44made, this one was my favorite. So I decided to download this to be my template reference image. And I popped it into its own folder on my computer to make it easy for Claude Code to find. And then I said to Claude Code, "Hey, take this reference image and basically use it as a template. make new versions of it in Higsfield featuring other popular dog breeds. And then I also gave it some instructions on things to do with each image in Canva. I told it what export settings to use and what image edits it should make using Canva, such as using the background remover tool to

13:13make the background on each image transparent. And this is actually pretty important because if we don't do this, the image will print like this onto a t-shirt with the ugly white box instead of like this, which is what we actually want, you know. Plus, I also told it to upload each of these images it creates into Printify and to add them onto a t-shirt and to save each t-shirt it makes as a draft product. I told her what my upload preferences were. And importantly, I also told it to come up with an optimized product title and an optimized product description for each product that is optimized for Etsy's

13:44algorithm so that I can get free traffic from Etsy's own recommendations and search engine. And then I just let it work its magic. And work its magic it did. While it was doing this, I stepped away from my computer. I did a workout in the gym and I also made some dinner and I also spent some time playing with my dog. And when I came back a couple of hours later, it was done. It's super cool. Check it out. Here were the images that it had generated for me inside of Hicksfield. And here are all the images that it edited in Canva to turn into print ready files, all saved on my

14:14computer. And here are all the t-shirts that it created in my Printify account with the designs uploaded to them. All saved as product drafts. And if you open up a listing, you'll see that it added in an Etsy optimized title and description to each listing. And it selected multiple t-shirt colors just like I requested. As I said, it's super cool, right? And I'm sure a lot of people watching this are going to want to go out there and actually try this workflow for themselves. Here is my prompt. If you would like to use it, you obviously can modify it to include things like, for example, your own

14:45reference image. And you'll also need to get a subscription to the specific tools that I used as part of my prompt as well. I'll include my affiliate links to them in the video description below if you would like to use them to support the channel. And thank you in advance if you do choose to do so. For Claude, you'll need the pro plan to access the code AI agent mode, which is $17 to $20 a month, depending on if you have an annual or monthly plan. And for Canva, to use the AI tools, you do need the pro account, which is a free 30-day trial

15:12right now if you'd like to try it out. And for Hicksfield, since images are cheap, you can pick whichever plan works for your output with the starter plan being $19 a month. And so then if you do the math, that means then that you can try out my workflow for yourself for less than $40. And if you are savvy, you can really maximize your monthly usage limits. And that actually brings me on to my first tip that I want to give you if you do want to try automating any business workflows for yourself with

15:39Claude Code. And my first tip is this. Use cloud code to take advantage of being able to work during off peak hours at night while you're sleeping. So obviously that whole idea of being able to make money while you sleep is very cool and this is kind of the first time in history that we've actually been able to properly do it, you know. So for that reason alone, yes, I absolutely think that it's a great idea to come up with some sort of automated job for Claude Code to do while you're sleeping, such as designing and uploading print on demand products for you. That way when

16:10you wake up in the morning, you'll have whatever it made for you ready to post for a profit, you know. But as cool as this is, it's not the only reason I recommend setting up a workflow to run at night. It's because during nighttime hours, especially in the USA time zones, that is off peak hours. People use AI tools less at night since, well, thus sleeping. That puts less strain on the servers, which means you have less chances for timeouts and errors. Plus, during nighttime hours, Claude has in the past sometimes offered token discounts to encourage people to work during Off Peak. And this actually brings me on to my next tip I have. But

16:45first, can I just ask for a quick favor? If you are enjoying this video and it is helping you, please consider giving it a like and subscribing because, well, I've recently had an influx of people clicking on my AI tutorials just to leave anti- AAI comments on them. I've started to nickname this the AI witch hunt. So, it genuinely does mean a lot to me each time a viewer takes the time to leave a kind, supportive, or thoughtful comment and click like on the video. So, thank you so much for your support. But yes, on to my next tip, which is this. Use automated tasks like

17:15my t-shirt workflow to maximize your weekly and your 5hour token limits. So, with Claude, your usage limits are displayed as tokens, and each week you get a set amount of tokens that you can use, which reset weekly. However, you can't just use all of your tokens at once on a big single automated task, even if you wanted to because Claude splits your weekly tokens into 5hour limits. So you don't want to give it a massive task to complete that is too much for this 5hour limit, you know, which is why I'm sure a lot of people are curious about how many tokens I used earlier when I got Claude code to make

17:50my designs, edit them, and then upload them to Printify optimized for traffic, which is fair enough because full disclosure, I'm on the Claude five times max plan, which gives me five times the usage of the cheaper pro plan that most people watching this video will be using. So, you might think, well, gee, if I try this on the cheaper pro plan, can I still do this, too? And the answer is yes. Yes, you can. Because when I checked my token usage, I'd actually only hit 11% on my 5hour token limit and only 2% on my weekly token limit. So, if you do the math, even if you were on the

18:23cheaper pro plan, you could have given Claude this task, too. And this actually brings me on to my next tip, which is that if you can use a CLI or an MCP integration to give Claude Code access to websites, tools, and apps, not the Chrome extension. Because you see, here's the thing. Yes, the Chrome

18:39extension is amazing. I don't deny that. Using this, you can usually get Claude Code to do almost anything you want for you. However, it does use up more Claude usage tokens if you are accessing tools and websites with Claude code through the Chrome extension. And it uses less tokens if it can access them through a proper MCP or CLI integration like that one we've been using for Higsfield. So, even though I could use the Chrome extension to access Higsfield, I wouldn't do that because it's slower and it uses more tokens. So, the way that I would treat this is I would use the Chrome extension as a very useful

19:16backup. Check to see if an integration for Claude Code exists for whatever websites or tool you want Claude Code to use first. And then if it doesn't, you can use Chrome instead. And you know what? This actually brings me on to my next tip, which is that if you're creative, you can use Claude Code to automate pretty much anything you want, not just shirts. Because seriously, I now use Claude Code to automate a lot of tasks. Like I don't think that most people are aware of this, but you can use Claude Code to automate the process of generating and editing together

19:48promotional videos. It's pretty cool. So, you take my t-shirts, right? Studies have shown that customers like to not just see photos, but to also see videos of products too before they buy. So, when listing a product for sale, like a t-shirt, while optional, it is great to include a promotional video of it in a listing if you can. And I have created a prompt that I can give to Claude code to make me an AI generated promotional

20:10video for my product just like these. It's pretty simple. First, I come to this tool here, Cap Cut. This is a popular video editor that I personally like that you can access in your Chrome internet browser. Now, unfortunately, it doesn't yet have a proper CLI or MCP called Code Connection like Higsfield as of me filming this video, but that is okay because again, we do always have our Chrome extension as a backup. So, I just signed into Caput on my Chrome internet browser and opened up a new 9x6 mobile video project. Then next up, I came to Claude Code and I gave it the file name of one of my t-shirt designs

20:48and I explained that I wanted it to make me a promo video by creating three different AI generated video clips of digital models wearing my t-shirt and then combining them together into a montage video using Cap Cut. And I also told it that to keep the videos looking as realistic as possible that it should use the latest Cedence 2.5 video model since this is as of me filming this tutorial but best at making super realistic video clips. Plus, it's really easy for Claude Code to access this as it is included within Higsfield. And then that was it. I just let it work its magic. It first of all found my t-shirt

21:21design image file that I had saved in my computer. Then it came to Higsfield and it generated the three different video clips using digital virtual models. It first of all generated photos of them wearing this t-shirt design that I had created. Then once it had photos of them that it liked, it popped each of those photos into the seedance 2.5 video generator and turned them into actual videos. And then came to Cap Cut and edited the clips together into a montage for me. And check it out. Here is the video that it made for me. Super cool, right? So yes, don't underestimate Claude Code. It can do a lot more than

21:53you might think. And if you're curious and want to try making your own promotional video like this, here is the prompt that I use. You are welcome to copy it and modify it for yourself. You will also need to make sure that you have access to the tools that I use in this prompt, which is Higsfield and Cap Cut. I will again include affiliate

22:10links to these in the video description. For Cap Cut, I use their pro account. They usually have a free pro trial account that you can sign up for to try it out. And for Hicksfield, when signing up, make sure that you check that the plan you're signing up for has access to the latest Cedence 2.5 video models like the Plus plan does. You'll also need to make sure that you have your t-shirt design saved onto your computer as an image. This was the image that I got it to use for these videos. So then, if you'd like to learn about even more ways that people are using AI tools to start

22:39online businesses, then be sure to watch my next video here [music] on screen, and I will see you in the next video.