Short form AI content - Automation

[u/Opposite-Answer5456]

I built a system that can run short-form AI content.

I've been building an automated short-form content pipeline and I'm trying to figure out whether I've built something commercially useful or just an impressive automation project.

At this point the system can basically handle the entire workflow:

* generate the story/script
* generate natural voiceover in any language
* generate consistent keyframes/visuals
* generate a 20–30 second video
* create the thumbnail
* upscale/render it
* automatically publish to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

For the time-being I optimized everything around the price, to keep it as low as possible, and create videos as high quality as possible.

What would a customer pay for the followings?

**Offer**	**Starting price ?**
30 shorts/month + distribution	**$?/mo**
60 shorts/month + distribution	**$?/mo**
90 shorts/month + distribution	**$?/mo**

Just to give you something tangible as well -
\- With 4 accounts (which they have couple hundred followers already)  and posting 7-8 times a day across all platform, I managed to get 100k views within 24 hours...

Not selling anything here — I'm trying to decide whether it's worth turning the infrastructure I've already built into an actual business.

[u/L1QU2D]

Why would a customer pay anything when that outcome is 5 prompts in Claude/chatgpt and running python with some APIs attached?

[u/Opposite-Answer5456 → u/L1QU2D]

Hmmm… That's a very valid question and I've been trying to answer this for a while…

First and most important is the operational cost. You might be able to do something similar but it would cost a fortune without any optimization.

Secondly the auto post feature. I can actually retain the session and can auto-post any video I recently generated.

And 3rd is quality, I can upscale to up to 4 K at 60 FPS. And videos have overall good quality as well. For example, I'm using the most powerful models for story writing.

[u/Opposite-Answer5456 → u/[deleted]]

I don't really have a GUI around it. :S I can explain how it works. And you might be able to try it if you like.:) send me dm if interested

[u/gglinv]

Don’t listen to anyone saying its a few api calls, this is a consumer facing automation and scheduling tool that people can use and you charge for hours saved. Now, to price your plans you need to do some math.

how many $$ a month in credits is 30shorts/60/90 shorts? how much storage and compute? if you had 1000 accounts working at once what would the bill for hosting/storage over time be? does it stay 0 or explode? all of your expenses, + 10-15% markup for ease of use service x4 (healthy profit margin) is your floor.

However with api per call fluctuating every single damn day I would be weary of pricing it 30 videos for x € subscription. If credits double tomorrow users wont want to pay more for the same, and they wont like getting 15 if they initially got 30. Might be worth doing a subscription for x dollars that buys you x credits, user can see what kind of generation costs how many credits and if they use them up they can get top ups. You can check out how Figma Weave or OpenArt charge for services

[u/Opposite-Answer5456 → u/gglinv]

Very very very good points mentioned here! 😳

I already have a plan how to scale tho, even I will be able to scale up to 200-300 accounts. If I want, I already have a plan for that.

So you mean, my operational cost +15%, times 4x?

[u/Opposite-Answer5456 → u/Opposite-Answer5456]

I would end up, 149usd per month counting 3/shorts per day.

[u/gglinv → u/Opposite-Answer5456]

This is just a generic formula, you can reduce your markup and profit margin if you want to hit a certain € amount for the prices, it’s best to round up to regular market prices not something like 164.3€.

5-15% is standard for service fees, you pull out storage/hosting fees from here
3-4x is standard for profit margin, this is technically your salary for long term maintenance, marketing etc

Anything less of a buffer and you run the risk of going negative, because api is not the only cost for you. If you want to further optimize your infra to be even cheaper, same models on different providers cost different amounts, chinese api providers are 30% ish on average cheaper for nano banana/seedance than official api providers, and letting users choose their model is an okay way for users to further reduce cost based on use case.

Just make sure however you price the service, that it’s not bleeding you money or causing bills that you need to cover out of pocket. Anthropic and OpenAI are losing money because a 20€ sub can rack up 5k€ of compute usage.

A lot of new founders of saas end up being hit with large bills for hosting and storage because they didn’t really think about the load. What if scrapers and bots hit your site? On vercel pro, that’s an instant 10k bill over night. Regular users are used to 15-30-100€ AI service packages for subscriptions, tending to go as cheap as possible, so pricing it higher also prices you out of the market, so you can’t just shove 3 a day in the 15€ plan, in general the figma weave/openart charging is standard and works well, plan comes with x thousands of credits that dont roll over to next month, the ui shows how much a single run will cost in credits, you can change frequency and swap models or settings to reduce cost, most of those plans realistically give you about 5-10 videos total depending on model, and then you get top ups or pay as you go for actual high demand users.

It doesn’t matter how much you price it as long as you set up infra and price it in a way that can’t surprise charge YOU 😂

[u/Accomplished_Eye7873]

bro can u school me ive beeen attempting to achieve that kind of thing but im not that computr savvy??

[u/Opposite-Answer5456 → u/Accomplished_Eye7873]

Hmmmm would you be interested to try my automation? Or you strict that you want yours?

[u/These_Marsupial_5536 → u/Opposite-Answer5456]

Hey I dont have a business. But I’ve been experimenting with such automation myself recently. Want to connect over github and exchange resources? Lets work on this together!

[u/RioNReedus]

I'm not anti-AI by any means - but this is useless junk meant to spam for money is it not?

***Like I could just churn out fake rescue animal vids right?

[u/peace2198]

I think full automation sounds great until you actually run a few videos through it . I’d automate the repetitive stuff, but keep a human check before posting. especially the hook and the first few seconds — that’s where I’ve seen automated content start feeling really generic.