Making Money With Gen AI: Can Anyone Do It

(Disclaimer: Profanity.)

Of course not. 

The AI influencers are presenting the latest LLMs as if they are the cure for world hunger.

Many content creators in this space will have you believe that Gen AI tools have lowered the barrier of entry for various industries, especially content writing. 

However, as someone who uses Gen AI daily to enhance my overall content creation process, I’ve discovered that it is the opposite. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude 3.5 Sonnet make good writers great and bad writers worse.

In fact, I’d argue it has become more difficult for young professionals to enter the content writing industry because AI can write better articles than beginners. This will dissuade them from continuing to improve their craft which is critical for career growth.

In this article, let’s look at why most people won’t make a dime with Gen AI and how you can be one of the few who can.

Why most people won’t make money with Gen AI

Consider writing blog articles for a business.

Writing an article involves a lot of things. 

Understanding the position of the business in the market, the pain points and expectations of the customers, and defining the brand voice. None of the activities I mentioned will result in even one article, yet they are essential.

After defining the above, you need to run the entire content production workflow from ideation to publication. Each of the phases in the workflow requires different tools and has unique, content-specific procedures.

In order to do any of them with the help of an LLM, you have to master each of them.

On top of that, you also need to experiment a lot with the AI chatbots to realize their capabilities and limitations. After hours of trial and error and iteration, you will finally automate one task of the whole damn process.

Thankfully, it becomes much easier after that.

Anyway, the point is to let you know the amount of time and energy that goes into it but remains behind the curtain as it doesn’t provide any visible results.

Most people won’t even bother.

And that’s the most crucial aspect of it. You have to grind with this shit every motherfucking day, like a savage, and remain patient with the results. Only a few have this discipline. 

There is a bad news and a great news.

The bad news is that you are probably one of those who will never make anything from the opportunities Gen AI brings us all. 

The great news is that if you want to make money with Gen AI in the content writing industry, I will tell you exactly how in the next section.

How to make money with Gen AI

Every piece of content that ever performed well (consumed intimately by the intended audience) served a purpose. It either entertained or educated the reader, listener, or viewer. If you are creating content that doesn’t serve that purpose, it will fail, regardless of the creation method.

Valuable content can be categorized based on format, platform, and production quality. For instance, it could be a simple blog post with just text or a studio-quality video for LinkedIn. The categorization parameters can be tangibly described.

The tangible descriptions of those categorization parameters can be codified, converted into writing guidelines, and evolved into prompts.

Consider you have a blog for your online t-shirt store. The articles will follow certain guidelines that dictate length, tone, goal, and format. Rewrite these guidelines as prompts and break the prompt into three sections:

1. The problem statement: Basically, the topic at hand. What message do you want to relay to your audience? 

2. The algorithm: How do you want the problem to be solved? It also contains context-specific information such as brand guidelines and content objectives.

3. The output format: Here you need to provide details like the word count, content flow, and the overall structure. 

2 and 3 are constants, in most cases. Once you codify it, you can use it over and over again. My recommendation is to convert it into a custom GPT to streamline the whole thing. You can find more details about building a custom content writing GPT in the previous chapter (linked below).

After you have your set of working prompts, start testing it. I suggest generating an article that you have already written or producing something that you’ve already created. That way you can compare the quality on a more objective level while retracing your paths.

Apart from learning whether your prompts are on the money, you will also find better ways to create content yourself. And that’s the ultimate goal — augmenting your overall content production process.

Next steps: Start with small things

There are many simple tasks like writing meta descriptions, validating ideas, and generating reference drafts that don’t require much planning. Start by doing them. The objective is to generate a helpful output that can be directly published or make the process of writing content much more streamlined.

The simplest GPT I can think of (off the top of my head) is the idea creation GPT for blogs for businesses and short-form content writers (think social media posts). 

Continue to iterate the prompts to enhance the usefulness of the GPT and eventually, you will boost your productivity and quality of output. 

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Next Chapter: Content Writing With AI: Everything You Need to Know

Previous Chapter: How to Build a Custom Content Writing GPT

Index (with Prologue): Content Writing With AI