Income Stream ideas and mindset content

The Very Best Side Hustles Using AI

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by

Jonathan Davis
in

If you’re neglecting AI, you’re making a big mistake.

One of my favorite quotes regarding artificial intelligence is, “You won’t lose to AI, but you’ll lose to individuals who get good at AI”.

I’m a blogger and freelance writer and while I don’t use AI to write my content, I do use it to:

  • Summarize long information (blog posts, YouTube video transcripts)
  • Give me good ideas for introduction paragraphs (Claude AI).
  • Creating summaries of my finished blog posts.
  • Creating Pin titles & pin descriptions for Pinterest.
  • Getting statistics from the internet (perplexity AI).
  • Taking Keywords and asking for similar content ideas.
  • & much more.

These things are just scratching the surface when it comes to AI.

There are people out there who are making some income with AI side hustles (including me). So, I thought putting all of these different ideas in one blog post would be a good idea. This way, you can see just how many possibilities there are when it comes to side hustles using AI.

Before I get started, sign up for my newsletter called Income Stream Ideas to not miss any updates on our upcoming blog posts:

#1 Start a Visual Blog Using Pinterest and Midjourney

This is the side hustle I’m currently doing, and so far, so good! Here’s a case study I did on it not too long ago.

The concept is a visual blog. I use Midjourney, chat GPT, and a blog hosted on Bluehost (WordPress).

The key is to find a niche on Pinterest that’s popular. This could be something like outfit ideas, makeup, tattoo ideas, food recipes, and more.

The main idea is to create long blog posts with mainly images (and a little bit of text).

So, let’s use hairstyles for instance. You could write a blog post called, “30 Short Hair Styles For Women”

To create that blog post, you’ll use ChatGPT to get those 30 ideas, and then use Midjourney to bring those ideas to life.

You can also use Chat GPT to put together short paragraphs for each idea to fill the post with some keywords.

Once you have all 30 ideas, it’s time to create interest pins.

You may be thinking that it’s hard to create 30 Pinterest pins and that it would take a lot of time, however, with the use of Pin Generator.

With Pin Generator you could have the tool scan all 30 images on your blog post, choose a template for the style you want, and it will generate 30 pins for you.

After the pins are generated you could use the AI tool within Pin Generator to change the titles and descriptions so they’re all unique.

Lastly, you could schedule the pins according to how many pins you want to post per day.

As you add more and more pins you could use the Smart Schedule feature which will rearrange all your scheduled pins to be optimized. This way you’re not posting the same URL too much which could be considered spammy by Pinterest.

Keys To Get Started

When getting started you want to set the pins to 5 pins per day and try and upload as many blog posts as possible.

Then you want to upload posts a little bit at a time until you’re able to have 10-20 pins per day posting daily.

Tools You Need

Total cost to get started: 64.00 per month.

This is a pretty low cost for the amount of exposure you could potentially get on your blog.

#2 Start an Amazon KDP Coloring Book Business

The second one on the list (one I haven’t tried) is creating coloring books on Amazon KDP. 

This one also requires you to have a Midjourney subscription.

With Midjourney you could quickly create a bunch of different pages for your coloring book. Let’s say your book is the ultimate Golden Retriever coloring book. You could create pages with different backgrounds and cute Golden Retrievers so that your customer has variety.

To do this you need a couple of tools.

  • Midjourney (as mentioned above).
  • Canva Pro- Allows you to create the actual books by converting them into a pdf using different templates.

What You Need To Know

  • In order to do this you need to format the image sizes the right way. The images should have a 2:3 aspect ratio. For Midjourney, all you have to do is ad –ar 2:3 at the end of a prompt and it will generate 2:3 images for you.
  • Before you upload them to Canva, you need to put them through a tool that will make the image resolution 300 dpi (instead of the standard 72 dpi). There are plenty of tools on the internet to do this.
  • You need to create a good cover design for marketing purposes.
  • In order to optimize for sales, you should do keyword research which allows you to maximize the chances of your coloring book to be found on Amazon.

The benefit of utilizing this method is that you can scale fast, and Amazon has their own audience so you’ll get plenty of searches once your book is uploaded. 

#3 Virtual Assistance

A lot of virtual Assistant work is:

  1. Creating captions for social media.
  2. Organizing information
  3. Taking video and turning it into blog content
  4. Restructuring content

Long story short, a lot of these virtual assistant tasks could be sped up by using Chat GPT.

Chat GPT could gather information and organize it the right way, create good captions for social media, take a video transcript and write it word for word in an organized fashion, and even restructure content for other platforms (for example: blog post to an X thread).

Virtual assistant jobs don’t pay too much, but they don’t have to. If you get virtual assistant jobs with the right tasks, you could probably get multiple virtual assistant jobs at once.

What You Need To Do To Get Started

All you need to do is get Chat GPT, a tool to schedule tasks, and Upwork to apply to jobs. ChatGPT costs $20.00 per month but once you get your first job it’ll pay for itself.

#4 Start a YouTube Channel Using Eleven Labs & Canva Pro

This is something I began to do a while back, however, some things took precedence and I put it on the back burner. During the time that I was working on this project, I was about to grow this YouTube channel to 32 subscribers in a short amount of time.

Here’s how I did it.

  1. I wrote an in-depth blog post on a topic.
  2. Once I was done with the post, I would put in Chat GPT, “Make a YouTube video script for this and make sure to start with a hook and then get into the information”.
  3. I would then edit the script to be a bit better.
  4. Once I got the script, I would put it into Eleven Labs, a tool that creates AI voiceovers (the best in the business in my opinion).
  5. Next up, I used artlist.io to put together a video (they have great music you can use for videos).
  6. Lastly, I would put the voice-over and music into a Canva video and edit the video using the stock footage and images they provide.
  7. Finally, I would upload the video to YouTube and add it to my blog post.

Tips To Make Good Videos For This Process

The one thing I would say helps the most is editing in a way that goes from shot to shot. Try and keep each stock footage shot or picture for 3 seconds each. This will help keep viewers engaged and focused on the information being given.

The hook also has to be good to get people to watch the rest of the video.

#5 Scale Your Print-On-Demand Designs Fast With AI

This one is similar to the Amazon KDP option.

Print-on-demand is another great way to make money online. It’s creating designs and putting them on products like t-shirts, mugs, phone cases, etc. You don’t have to worry about inventory or shipping because the company takes care of all that for you.

For this method, you could use Midjourney to come up with unique designs using AI and then put them on products using print-on-demand websites like Printful or Teespring.

What You Need To Know

  • For this method, you also need to upscale the images to make it the very best quality for print.
  • This method is extremely saturated so you need to make sure you have unique designs that will stand out.
  • Marketing is key for this method, so make sure to promote your products on social media and through targeted ads. Don’t just rely on the platforms to get traffic. Grow your own community and fan base.

#6 Create Ebooks With The Help Of Chat GPT

If you have a niche business. Chances are you have some product ideas. One of them could be an ebook.

Ebooks are a great way to make good money.

Some people have content businesses that make a full-time income on just ebook sales alone.

For this method, you could use Chat GPT to create a COMPREHENSIVE outline for your ebook in minutes. Then, use that outline to create the content for your book.

You may be wondering how to get topics for this E-book.

I use a tool called Gummy Search. This tool uses AI to scan Reddit communities and come up with the biggest problems in those communities.

With this information, you could put together a product based on the most common problems or questions people have.

Because these communities have multiple problems, you could create a big list of E-books to create over time.

What You Need To Know

  • Ebooks can be sold on platforms like Amazon Kindle or your own website. (I use Gumroad).
  • Like the coloring books, you could use Canva Pro in order to create your E-book.
  • Make sure you don’t create the actual content using Chat GPT. Use it as an outline guide and make sure to add your own unique touch and expertise.
  • This method is especially good for creators who have email lists or social media presence they can use to promote and sell their E-books.

I have a newsletter in the productivity niche and the first product I created was a morning routine ebook, which at launch got a couple of sales.

I don’t push it that much but here and there I get some sales. 

#7 Sell Digital Art On Etsy

If you’ve been on Etsy before, you’d know a lot of people sell digital art.

By combining a site like Printify and Midjourney, you could create art in seconds and add it to your shop.

What Printify allows you to do is create a product and link it to your Etsy shop.

When you get an order, Printify will automatically fulfill that order and ship it to your customer (essentially dropshipping).

Printify also has an extensive mockup library for your products, so you don’t have to spend time taking photos or creating mockups.

What You Need To Know

  • Etsy charges a listing fee for every product you upload (which isn’t high).
  • Etsy has its customer base which makes it easier for your products to be found and purchased.
  • You could use Etsy keyword tools to create underserved and popular products.
  • You need to be able to think outside the box to create unique and appealing digital art products. The ease of creation makes it so everyone can do it, so make sure to add your creative touch.
  • Just like the other methods, you have to improve the quality before uploading your designs.

#8 Using Eleven Labs To Grow An Instagram Account

Instagram accounts with voice overs are doing extremely well right now, especially in the motivational niche.

By using Elevel Labs, you can automate the process of creating voiceovers for your Instagram posts.

All you need to do is write a script that suits your audience, create a voice over for it using Eleveln Labs, and then edit a reel on Canva Pro.

One of my favorite Instagram accounts that use this method is Untethrd.

They use a unique motivational, vintage, and artistic approach to their posts. Their posts go over “how to break the loop” mentally.

With an Instagram account like this one you could monetize in a couple of different ways including shoutouts, courses, digital products, a newsletter, and more.

I specifically like the idea of using it to grow a newsletter because of the fact that you could use that audience forever to use as a customer base for new courses or digital products.

What You Need To Know

  • Consistency is key with Instagram growth. Make sure to post regularly and interact with your audience.
  • Use relevant hashtags to attract more followers and increase engagement.
  • Collaboration with other accounts in a similar niche can also help boost your growth.
  • Don’t be afraid to try new ideas and formats for your posts, as long as they align with your brand and audience.

Conclusion

There are so many different ways you could leverage the power of AI as a side hustle and different methods will begin to appear as AI gets more advanced. 

Do you have a side hustle that’s not on this list that is done by using AI?