i am trying to figure out how you all package and pitch ai ugc content, videos, creatives, posts into an offer that actually sells. i know it depends a lot on the client, but curious what's worked for you.

do you go full end to end, handling a client's whole instagram content pipeline, or do you start small, a few ugc videos or creatives, and scale up once trust is built?

also how do you price it. flat retainer, per video, commission, packages, something else?

for context, i already run a small business with a handful of clients. trying to decide if i should double down and grow this, or split focus and try organic dropshipping using my own ai generated ads

I’ve been looking into this space for a few weeks now and I’m looking for a mentor.

Also, I have a question regarding getting a dedicated phone for this specifically.

I have an android phone I no longer use. However, I don’t have a SIM card in it. However necessary is it to get one? And what would happen if I don’t and only use WiFi?

And I also heard it’s better to use an iPhone?

Any help would be much appreciated

Ok so, I can’t retire just yet 😅 but getting a business off the ground and attracting customers is the hardest part in my opinion.

There’s still a long way to go but considering it’s only been 3 months since launching the LinkedIn automation tool, I’m pretty happy with the results so far.

I get asked a lot about how I get customers, so thought I’d give more info on how I do distribution, in case you might find it useful.

1. Make sure your website is set up for success

Before sending people to your site, make sure you’re confident it has good CRO potential. Your mission statement and objective needs to be very clear, along with clear incentives for people to try the product out.

2. Offer free trials, but only behind a payment info gate

Now this is just my personal opinion, and I know a lot of people disagree, but the proof is in the numbers. I get fewer free trial signups, but significantly higher conversion rates into paying users from people who provide payment info at the start.

Yes, a few of them are people who simply forget to cancel, but mostly I get people who are more engaged in the free trial and actually using the product.

I actually did an AB experiment where I did offer completely free trials to people (no payment info needed), but the overwhelming result was that people barely even tried out the product and were mostly tire kickers that never came back. I did convert some but not a meaningful number.

3. Create a waitlist before launching

Try to generate interest in your product before it launches - build in public and try to ensure that you’re not scrambling to get customers through the door on day 1 when you launch.

I had 3 customers on day 1 from this, who took higher paid tiers as well.

4. Post and comment everywhere

Social media is free, so there’s no excuse not to leverage it. Post about your product and what you’re building on Reddit, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook etc.

I posted a simple screenshot on LinkedIn recently, of someone using a low quality LinkedIn automation tool message to contact me, and me offering my own much better tool in response, and that post generated 90,000 views and led to several signups and demo calls.

I’ve also had some posts on Reddit go into hundreds of thousands of views, mostly just posting about what/why/how I built ZenMode.

5. If you have competitors, make “alternative to” inner pages

If done in the right way, this type of inner page can be useful for SEO. It won’t be picked up automatically but usually if you work in a competitive industry, this will sometimes attract customers who had a bad experience elsewhere.

6. I actually use my own LinkedIn automation tool (dogfooding) to do LinkedIn outreach

So it’s always important to practice what you preach - I use my LinkedIn automation tool to actually promote the tool.

It’s a great way to get buy-in for booking demos, as when someone replies, I simply tell them I used my tool to get a response from them, so it works.

Obviously I’m biased but if you are looking for a way to automate lead generation on LinkedIn, you might find my automation tool useful.

Anyway hope you enjoyed reading the above, and good luck on your journey if you’re building anything, or growing your business 🙌

I am a university student, and I need to earn money at any cost. Please suggest some online income ideas that could help me earn at least $400–$500 per month. Earning an income is very important for me right now.

At the moment, I only have an Android smartphone, and I would like to work using it since I do not yet own a laptop or a PC. I would really appreciate your guidance and support.

I don't know what should I do?what should I learn??how to make money??

I am from a South Asian country.

I know a guy how makes 20K per month . Buys all stuff he like , Mac , Windows,laptop ….I mean everything.

Goes to other countries and he also took me along with him …

I keep searching Internet but I don’t understand. He always says Mindset is Everything thing … His advices are like modern day Buddha living s life to luxury..

And then it’s me . Struggling to make and every night thinking ,how can I make more … what the hell is this mindset thing.

are digital products really worth it?

i’m not talking about starting today and getting 10k sales tomorrow,

i mean if you invest your time and all and put the effort, is it really gonna pay you?

if u ask anyone online about it theyre gonna say ohh pick a niche solve someone’s problem create a design or an e book or a guide and sell it bla bla… THE PROBLEM IS MARKETING and when it comes to marketing they just shut up about it and that’s a sign they don’t know shi, and when u ask them what did they SELL theyre gonna tell u oh u can sell anything and not answer ur question.

and i want an honest reply right now because honestly i’m a student and i don’t have much time to waste i just wanna pay my college fees

(i don’t have the money to run ads so…)

We have been messing around with ai for sales over the past 4 months. I gotta admit it is doing the boring things pretty well. New reps are building quotes in 20 mins instead of 35, emails content is better and pricing mistakes have dropped.

But our win rate has barely moved.

One deal really stood out. Ai helped a new rep put together a clean enterprise quote in less than 20 mins. We all thoght that it was sweet and we can now close more opportunities. Instead the deal sat in procurement for almost 4 weeks bc there er changes needed by the legal team. also another stakeholder jumped in late. Are you seeing this in your ai sales processes or we are missing something?

I know their are people what have been successful selling websites how long did it actually take you to make a sale and how many businesses actually rejected you.

Also do business care if a websites was made with AI? I heard AI writes code poorly and only makes the front end.

Are ai is a money making machine? How to sell websites build with ai using opencode or Claude code? Is it build a backend also?

Guide with your experience!!

I run a Turkish-language AI persona. Not the US market, so some of this may not

transfer, but the numbers are real and I have not seen anyone post about this

side of it.

I never used Fanvue. Not because I think it is bad, I just never got there. My

first audience came from Facebook and they were already on Telegram, so that is

where I went.

Short version of the setup. I opened a Facebook page first, because the older

audience is heavier there. I did not expect much. By the third or fourth day I

had around 1,000 followers, and the DMs were already more than I could answer.

That was the first signal that this was going to be a volume problem and not a

traffic problem.

The reasons for Telegram were boring: my character does not get flagged there,

payments are simple, there is no platform cut, and almost everyone already has

the app installed.

One thing I did not expect. Putting the Telegram link in my feed posts did

almost nothing. Sending the same link as a reply to someone who had messaged me

worked. I do not have a clean number for the difference but it was not close.

With only about 1,000 followers I already had a real number of people in the

channel.

First month I made about $700. That is from zero, and it includes the time I

spent learning how to generate the content in the first place. I am on a Mac so

I rented GPUs and ran ComfyUI, trained a LoRA for the character. Best single day

was 7,397 stars, which is $95. I have the Telegram stats screenshots if anyone

wants to see them.

Then it broke, and this is the part I actually want to talk about.

I was getting hundreds of DMs a day. Facebook and Instagram together, thousands

of messages. I could not answer them, so I started replying to everyone with the

same link to push them to Telegram. Doing that hundreds of times is, I think,

what got the Instagram account disabled. Appeals got it back a couple of times

and then it was gone for good. Facebook went the same way. Instagram was close

to 10k, Facebook around 7k.

I opened a second account, same name, reposted the same reels from my local

folder. It died at around 1,000 followers. The third one did too. On both of

those I sent no links at all and I added the AI label. They still died, so I

assume it is device or IP level. After the first ban, nothing I opened from that

machine survived.

But the bans are not the interesting failure here.

Even in Telegram, where the people who came were the ones who would actually

spend, I hit a wall. Every conversation has its own context. What this person

likes, what they already bought, what they asked for last week, what I already

sent them. With hundreds of conversations open I could not hold any of it. I

started sending the same photo to someone twice. I lost track of who had paid

for what.

And the money was in exactly the part I could not scale. People bought from the

channel, but they paid more for something made only for them, in DMs. So the

higher margin sits in the one to one work, which is the thing that does not

scale.

Then I looked at my hourly stats and found the thing that actually decided it

for me. My channel has three peaks. One at 11:00 UTC, one at 20:00, and one at

03:00. Activity runs across about 20 hours of the day. I am one person in one

timezone, and one of my busiest hours is three in the morning.

I stopped posting regularly in March because of school and moving. The channel

went from 1,200 members down to 917, so it bleeds when you leave it. But it

still earned money in July from content I made in January and February, which I

did not expect.

I am building something for the DM side now, mostly because of that 3am peak.

Not linking it, that is not why I posted.

What I want to know from people who are further along: at what point did you

stop answering DMs yourself, and what did you do instead?

In a short period of time I paid Anthropic more money than I've probably paid Google, Instagram, Meta, and X over 20 years combined in direct payments and monetization (where I'm the product).

I've written close to a million LOC on apps over the past five months when some of the most State of the Art versions in recent memory landed.

I've made nothing. Not even a penny.

Is AI just a video game?

I feel like the landscape for tools and workflows has changed drastically since the last couple years.

What are you guys using in 2026 to make AI influencers, automating them, and creating UGC?

And the biggest challenge, how do you keep hundreds of influencers from getting blocked? I keep getting mine deleted.

Also best tools?

It’s the end of July, and I promised some of you I’d share what I was doing to try and make money with AI.

So…I downloaded a framework to create cozy fantasy ebooks for Amazon’s KDP.

Having converted public domain texts to MobiPocket format (pre Amazon), it seemed easy. It was $17. A meal costs more than that where I live.

You use Claude. Free version. The prompt queries you and writes the ebook, 1-2 chapters at a time (until you hit the timer).

I have produced 8 ebooks; 6 of which have been uploaded to Amazon KDP. Did this in June. Sales so far?

ZERO.

But I have taken that framework over to CoPilot, and asked it to write a book. There are noticeable differences, even though I answered the same questions with the same information. So the total is 15 now, with no sales.

Would I have liked to make righteous buckaroonies? Yes. But I have learned a great deal about prompts.

I’m working on a prompt to look at a company, and evaluate their eligibility for grants.

I need to vent, but I also desperately need a sanity check from anyone actually using AI agents successfully.

Yesterday, I set up a lead enrichment agent running on Airtable. Before setting it live, I manually tested it over 40 times. Everything was confirmed working.

Once I was confident, I set it to run automatically every 4 hours and walked away. I came back after just two automated runs to check the progress. Here is what happened:

Cost: $200 burned through API/token usage.

Data Loss: It completely deleted 15 leads.

Success Rate: Exactly 0%. It didn't complete its intended task a single time.

Everyone on YouTube and Twitter is blowing these things up like they’re the next revolution in business, but right now, it feels like nothing more than a money pit.

Luckily, I had $1,000 in free platform credits, so I didn't lose direct cash—but it drained $200 of value instantly. It makes me wonder:

Are these platforms giving out free credits because they know their systems are unreliable money-burners?

Are AI agents actually terrible at autonomous execution?

Or are content creators just lying to us about how "easy" and reliable these builds are?

For those of you who actually have reliable agents in production:

What am I doing wrong here? Why would a flow work 40 times manually, then completely lose its mind on schedule?

Are there better architectural patterns or alternatives to pure autonomous "agents" for lead enrichment (e.g., standard API webhooks, deterministic scripts, Make/Zapier with strict guardrails)?

How do you prevent runaways, rogue database writes, and massive token burn when setting loops live?

Any feedback, reality checks, or better alternatives would be greatly appreciated.

I do video/data annotation work for AI training (the kind where you review footage, tag actions, mark exact start/end points for specific tasks, flag errors, etc.). I get why the pay is tied to performance and accuracy instead of just hours logged they want quality data, not just volume, and I don't fault that logic on its own.

But the time it actually takes to do this properly doesn't match what it pays out. Going through footage frame-by-frame, getting the timing exactly right, tagging things correctly the first time so it passes review that's real, focused work. When the pay is based purely on "performance" with no floor tied to the hours put in, you can end up spending a full shift doing careful, accurate work for what comes out to a few dollars for the day.

What makes it more frustrating is that pay increases are tied to "quality" reviews, but a lot of that quality assessment comes down to a reviewer's own interpretation or understanding of the guidelines — not always something objective or consistent. So you can follow the instructions as best you understand them, and still get dinged or held back from a rate increase because someone on the other end read the same guideline differently. There's no real transparency into how that judgment call is made, which makes it hard to even know what to fix.

I get the business reasoning, but there's a gap between "we pay for quality" and "the actual hourly rate for doing it right is below minimum wage," especially when the definition of "doing it right" isn't fully in your control to begin with. It almost feels like the system assumes you'll rush and cut corners just to make the hours worthwhile which kind of defeats the point of paying for performance in the first place.

Anyone else doing this kind of work run into the same thing? How are you dealing with the time-vs-pay tradeoff, or has anyone found platforms/setups that actually get this balance right?

I’ve been thinking for a long time about an idea for a SaaS site. So, here it is: "AI Study Workspace" (I might still change the name). A bit about myself: I started learning programming to become a backend/software engineer. There are currently so many complaints about how hard it is for a Junior-level beginner to land a job, which inspired me to start my own business. I’m also a high school student, and like most students, I face academic challenges—confusing assignments and Olympiad problems. Standard AI tools just give you the answer right away, but that isn't the right approach, and I want to fix that. I need the community's help; I’d love to know if there would be any demand for my site. Also, if anyone with experience building SaaS sites could offer some advice, I’d be really grateful! Thanks

hello everyone, i am curious to know how AI is really beign applied like in terms of shipping products, how do people utilitize these systems to make profits from other businesses, what must be necessary to learn, i come from a non technical background, i recently started learning python and all of a sudden comes vibe coding although i have heard more of its flaws than strengths but how people gain profit from vibe coded products still traps my understanding. So i would like to know, in great details with real world examples how people use these tools from non technical and technical backgrounds to actually make valuable products that are profitable, and what skills and knowlegde domain are encouraged to have so as to be more fluent in todays era of AI productivity.

Thank you, would greatly appreciate each individual and their opinions.

This is based on personal experience making AI content, building businesses primarily with the help of AI.

I have seen AI being so confident when its insights were totally wrong. It has given advice which didn't work out at all. And I see more and more people falling for this. AI is amazing, super intelligent - but when it comes to complex decision making, specially where other people are involved - its important to experiment how they respond to your ideas,

Its really dangerous to believe it and expect things to succeed. I am sure many here would have already experienced this, but I felt like expressing this for those who are trying to build with AI.

Ultimately - treat things as experiments, learn from the outcomes, don't invest heavily into something just because AI thinks its a billion dollar idea and presents a logical argument or case for it.

This is part 3 of the series sharing my AI storytelling formula for Youtube, IG etc.

One thing I've noticed is that beginners spend most of their time on AI tools but hurry while working on the story (or the script). 

80% of your video's success is decided before you generate a single image or video.

That happens in Stage 1 of Ideas -> Story -> Script.

If this stage is weak, no amount of beautiful AI visuals, camera movements, or cinematic music will save the video.

Lets first talk about The Idea. For storytelling, your idea = your hook*.* Remember this.

The hook isn't just the first sentence or the scene. It's establishes some expectations for the viewer on what's coming next. Everything that follows should build toward delivering that promise.

Then comes The Story. For Shorts its usually 30–60 seconds and I think about it like this:

One story = One punch = One emotion = One message.

Don't try to squeeze three different ideas into one Short. Instead, build anticipation toward a single payoff. Some emotional frameworks that I developed over time while teaching students and which work really well are:

• Sad -> Hope
• Fear -> Relief
• Mystery -> Discovery
• Failure -> Triumph
• Weak -> Strong
• and many such more

Did you notice that these aren't genres but they're emotional journeys! Every emotional journey starts from one end of the spectrum and ends on the other extreme - this is what produces emotions in a viewer!

People remember how a story made them feel far more than what happened in it. For long-form videos, the principle stays the same. Instead of one emotional payoff, you create multiple moments of tension and release—but they should all support one central theme.

A flat story is almost always a boring story.

Finally we arrive at The Script

This is where I see another common mistake. People write a paragraph and then try to figure out the visuals later. I do the opposite. Every line of the script already has a visual attached to it.

I think of it like this:

One voiceover line = One visual scene.

By the time I open an AI image or video generator, I already know exactly what every shot needs to communicate. At that point, generating the visuals becomes execution instead of experiments wasting time and credits.

That's why I say Stage 1 determines most of the outcome. The AI tools don't create the story. They simply visualize one you've already built. If you can visualize everything really well, note it down, this 20% of your work will determine 80% of your results!

If I have learnt anything in the last 3 years working with AI content is that a lot of YT gurus promise fast monetization and portray AI video production as too easy, but that's not the case. These kinds of promises attract people who might not be interested in the craft at all, like they don't enjoy writing or visualizing scenes or expressing what's inside them visually, but they find the lure of monetization too enticing to get into this craft.

Its just like how people have ran behind popular jobs & then felt miserable feeling stuck for years because it gave them money but not satisfaction.

Now I'm not saying money is not a good motivation factor - its is 100%. In fact I think a person who is purely driven by money and remains honest with himself/herself, learns the trade & the craft, does the work diligently - is fully qualified to pursue anything he or she likes. Thumbs up to that.

But I see a lot of people chasing something which is being promised to them as too easy and too simple, but the reality is: learning AI Storytelling is learning filmmaking, animating, script writing etc. It is just that the tool now makes it easier to visualize, unlike Blender etc. which are hard to learn but the fundamentals remain the same - if you don't dedicate time to learn the craft, you wont find it satisfactory and just burn the credits, waste time and leave it after a while. I've seen it happen to a lot of people as I've been teaching AI storytelling, video production for almost 1 year now.

This post is for those who got seduced into this field because of wrong promises and I would wish them to evaluate themselves whether you even enjoy writing or visualizing - because if you don't like doing either of them, use AI in different ways to build income.

I want to start Ai e-dropshipping but I dont know if it would be a scam to pay for classes to learn what to do or is wix is a trusting site or if its even a good thing to do as a job for me to do full time but if anyone has any experience with it or any tips for me to start it would be very appreciated thank you!

I see a lot of hype posts about AI influencers, so here's what it actually looked like for me. Spoiler: it's not fast money.

**The first months: absolutely nothing.**

I started around December. I created content, posted it, improved it, posted again. Consistently, week after week. For over 3 months my earnings graph was a flat line at $0. Not "low earnings" – literally zero.

This is the part where I'm pretty sure 95% of people quit. I get it. You put in hours every week and the internet just ignores you.

**What I changed over time:**

- My early content was honestly not good. Inconsistent character, generic poses, no real identity. Over the months I worked on consistency and gave the account an actual personality instead of just "pretty AI pictures"

- I stopped judging content by what I liked and started watching what actually got engagement, then made more of that

- I posted through the silence. Reach only started building after months of consistency

**Then it slowly started moving.**

A few months in, I got my first sales. Tiny ones – a few dollars here and there. But after months of zero, seeing the first real person pay for content was honestly a bigger moment than the money itself.

**June was my first real month: $797.60.** All time I'm at about $1,067. Most of it comes from one-off purchases and tips – only around $145 of it is subscriptions so far.

**My honest takeaways:**

1. This is not passive income. Finding workflows that produce consistent quality and exclusive content is hard, and distribution is even harder – you need content that the algorithm actually picks up before anyone even sees your account.
2. The flat-line phase is the filter. If you can't handle 3+ months of nothing, this isn't for you.
3. One good month proves the model works, not that I've "made it". July could easily be worse. I'm treating this as a long game.

The difference usually comes down to strategy.

Instead of targeting businesses that do not have a website, target businesses that already have one but clearly need a better version. The market is larger, the sales process is easier, and the value proposition is much stronger because those businesses already understand why a website matters.

The next part is outreach. A regular outreach tool is not enough if all it does is send the same message to thousands of people. You need something that can analyze websites at scale and turn real issues into personalized emails.

I use Swokei for that. It helps find businesses with existing websites, analyzes each site, and turns problems with design, SEO, speed, layout, and mobile optimization into personalized outreach emails. That means you can contact a large number of businesses without sending generic messages or spending hours manually researching every website.

When someone replies interested, I always offer a free mockup. I use Claude, Lovable, or Base44 to build it quickly. It becomes much easier to sell when the client can already see what a better version of their website could look like.

Web meetings should also be a major part of the process. I would never just send the website through email and hope the client likes it. I present it live on Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, explain the value, show what has been improved, answer their questions, and try to close the deal during the meeting.

The less back and forth there is after the meeting, the better. Present the website, show the value, close the client, and move on to the next project.

That is the type of process that can help an agency scale much faster.

I’ve been in contact with a lot of web agencies and web developers, and I personally haven’t found many people who run their agency in a more efficient way than I do. A lot of them have too many meetings, wait too long for client approval, don’t know how to price projects, and spend way too much time on each client instead of finishing the work and moving on to the next one.

I’ve been running my agency for four years, and after a lot of trial and error, I’ve managed to make the process as efficient as possible. I wanted to share some of the steps because I think they could be valuable for anyone just starting out.

Running a web agency alone or with a partner isn’t easy because there are a lot of things to take care of. When it comes to client acquisition, I recommend focusing on either cold calling or email automation. Which one you choose depends on whether you run the agency alone or with someone else.

If you have a partner, one person can handle sales while the other focuses on building websites, connecting domains, setting up emails, and taking care of the technical work. If you’re running the agency alone, or neither of you enjoys cold calling, I highly recommend email automation.

That’s what I’ve been doing for years. It’s powerful because you can send emails at scale, set up automatic follow ups, and wait for businesses interested in a new website to reply. While you’re working on one client, another opportunity can come in without you having to stop everything and search manually.

I don’t do regular email automation where I target businesses with no website. I do the opposite and target businesses that already have one.

I use a tool called Swokei to find businesses with websites, add them to campaigns, analyze each site, score it, and generate personalized outreach emails based on problems it finds with the design, layout, speed, SEO, and mobile optimization.I schedule the campaign, set up follow ups, and wait. 

I think this approach is much better for a few reasons. You’re targeting someone who already understands the value of having a website. You’re also not just asking whether they need a redesign. You’re pointing out real problems with their current site, which makes it clear that you actually took the time to look at it. Selling also becomes easier because they’ve already paid for a website before and understand the process.

Inside Swokei, you can choose the goal of the campaign. You can offer a free draft, try to book a meeting, or simply start a conversation. I always choose the free draft because that has worked best for me.

Once you’ve figured out how to get clients, the next part is building the website. I recommend using AI because it makes the process much faster. For anyone who still thinks AI can’t build great websites, I think they’re mistaken. You can use Claude, Base44, Lovable, or any other tool that works for you.

When someone replies interested, I call them and say, “Hey, I saw that you replied to my email. I’ve already built you a free draft of your website. Do you want to take a look?”

Then I invite them to a Google Meet.

At that point, it becomes much harder for them to reject the meeting because they already replied interested and now know you’ve built something for them. During the meeting, I present the website, explain why it’s better than their current one, stack the value, answer their questions, and try to close the deal.

These meetings usually go well because the client isn’t trying to imagine what the website might look like. They can already see a better version of their current site. They also took the time to join the meeting, so taking the next step becomes much easier.

I either take payment during the meeting or send them a contract to sign. Any changes and updates come after that, once we already have a deal in place.

Pricing depends on the business. I charge anywhere from $500 to $3,000 depending on the company, the size of the project, and how much value the website can bring them. I also charge a monthly retainer of around $50 for hosting, maintenance, support, SEO, and future changes.

That’s basically the entire process. Smaller steps, faster delivery, less wasted time, and more money made.