3 Free AI Side Hustles for Beginners That Actually Make Money

Literally everyone talks about using new AI tools to start side hustles and make money, but nobody talks about what

you're supposed to do when you're broke and can't afford all these subscriptions. So, I put on my detective

hat, did some digging, and found three simple side hustles that actually work for beginners and that can be started

using just free AI tools. And the third one is the one I'm most excited about cuz out of all three, that's the one

that's made me the most money personally. All right, so first up we got probably the most fun one out of the

three today, AI TikTok explainer videos. I found this account a short while ago and this is basically what they post,

simple explainer videos made with AI generated illustrations and an AI voice. These are really easy to make with free

AI tools and I'll show you exactly how in a second. What blew my mind was that this account only started around four

months ago, has just 33 videos, and already has close to 200,000 followers. Their first ever video got over 1.2

million views, and the second one, posted just two days later, got over 1.4 million. And that's when I realized I

might have accidentally stumbled onto a pretty powerful opportunity here because if a brand new account can explode to

millions of views from its first videos, there has to be a huge demand for this type of content. So, I got curious and

added up all the views on this account. In four months with only around 30 videos, they've gotten over 20 million

views. And the amount of money you could earn from 20 million TikTok views is a lot. If you didn't know, TikTok has a

creator rewards program that pays for videos 1 minute or longer. [music] And surprise, surprise, guys, this

creator has made sure every video is just over a minute so they can get ads played for them. So, I did the math.

Since they talk about finance, the amount TikTok pays per 1,000 views tends to be on the higher end, around $1 to

$3. Even using $1 on the low end, 20 million views comes out to over $20,000. Now, just to be clear, that's only a

rough estimate. The real number could be lower or way higher, especially with TikTok's additional rewards for high

engagement, specialized, and educational content, which these videos fit pretty well. The other thing is, you need at

least 10,000 followers to get accepted into TikTok's monetization program. So, if this account had no problem flying

past 10K and getting close to 200,000 followers within a few months, I wanted to know if they were the only one. And

it didn't take me long before I was coming across account after account that gained 10,000 followers within a couple

of weeks of starting out. This right here is Squidward's Vault, posting the exact same style of video, over 30,000

followers, and the account is 2 months old. Their first ever upload did over 600,000 views. Here's another one doing

the same thing, 37,000 followers, 4 months old. This one has 21,000 followers, 3 months old. This one has

15,000. This one has 80,000. I can go on and on like this, but at this point, I think you can see the opportunity, too.

So, now, let me show you exactly how to make one of these yourself, because the whole workflow runs on free tools, and

it's simpler than you'd expect. Step one, pick a niche. It could be finance, science, history, psychology, AI,

whatever, whatever. I'm going with AI. Step two, the character. This is where you're going to let your inner weirdo

out. And girl, you don't need some anime protagonist as your character. Keep it really simple. I mean, just look at

these videos. It's literally a cutout of a cat, a badly drawn stick man, an owl. If anything, the simpler and stupider it

is, the better. My idea is going to be a crow wearing a cheap suit. So, I open ChatGPT, describe my crow, ask it to

generate a full body reference image, and boom, that's my boy. Next, we need video ideas. I'll start a new chat,

explain the niche and the type of content I'm making, and ask [music] for a list of viral TikTok video ideas. And

ChatGPT spits out this massive list. There's like a [music] year's worth of content here, but a lot of these ideas

are kind of though. So, personally, I don't really trust the best recommendations [music] Chat GPT

gives me at the bottom. I just go through the list myself and pick whatever just grabs my interest. This

one, for example. Once I have the idea, I give it back to Chat GPT and ask it to draft a 1-2 minute TikTok script with a

strong hook. Normally, I'd spend around 30 minutes here adding a bit of my own touches. But, today, let's go ahead with

this. Next, I give Chat GPT our character reference and the script and tell it to create visual prompts for

each part of the narration. Then, I take those prompts into Gemini, add the crow as a reference so the character stays

consistent, and generate all the visuals. The only problem now is that these are still static images. So, let's

inject some life into them. We're heading over to Kwai AI. It's completely free, works pretty much like Chat GPT,

and gives you basically unlimited image and video generation. I drop in the illustration, tell it how I want it

animated, and there we go. Now, we've got this cool little animation. [music] Finally, step five, editing. We're using

Clipchamp, which is Microsoft's free video editor. Throw in all your generated clips, add the narration, so

you can either use your own voice or Clipchamp's free text-to-speech, which has a bunch of voices to choose from.

Then, slap on the auto captions, as well. And yeah, girl, there you go. >> Woah.

>> Next up, we got affiliate marketing. But, stay with me here because this is not going to be the same affiliate

marketing advice you've probably seen in a hundred other videos. And no, you don't need to build a social media

following, you don't need to start your own website, and obviously, since we're doing everything for free, no ads

involved, either. So, we are using medium.com. Medium is basically like YouTube, but for articles. Yeah, you can

create an account for free, start publishing articles, and use those articles to promote affiliate products

and services. Now, hear me out cuz we're not actually trying to grow on Medium itself. If you've written here before,

you know growing an account isn't exactly easy and honestly not the safest thing either cuz I've had like two

accounts suspended out of nowhere before. So, what the heck are we doing on Medium?

Well, we're not using Medium's audience, but we're using Medium's authority. Now, I know at this point you're probably

more confused than before, so let me explain like one of those TikTok videos. Basically, Medium is what you'd call a

high authority website on Google. It's been around for years, gets millions of views every month. People spend a lot of

time on Medium, so Google loves showing Medium articles in the first page of search results. And think about how you

actually use Google. When you search something, you click whatever is sitting on the first page, right? How often do

you go to page two? Basically, never. So, if you can get an article into the first page thousands of people are

already searching for, there's obviously a pretty big opportunity to make money from that traffic. But normally, to do

this, you'd need your own website, which not only costs money to set up, but can months before Google even considers

putting it anywhere [music] near that first page. But Medium already has that authority built in. So, when you publish

there, it's almost like borrowing their VIP pass to Google. Now, that doesn't mean anything you post is going to be

like boom, straight to the first page. The keywords you pick, which I'll talk about in a second, and the article

itself still matter. But you've got a much better shot at ranking for searches a lot of people are making through

Medium than trying to do the same thing with your own brand new website. And when it does work, Google can rank your

articles really fast. You can see this yourself. Search almost anything on Google and I bet you'll find some random

Medium articles sitting there on the first page. Let's try something simple and generic like best survey sites. And

look at this, there's a Medium article right here. What's crazy is this article has like three claps. So, it's not a

popular article within Medium. And if we go to the writer's account, they have eight followers and they've only posted

two articles in their life. So this isn't some massive medium creator at all. Yet their article is sitting on the

first page of Google for search that thousands of people do every month. And if you actually open it, you can see

she's doing exactly what I'm talking about. She has put referral links inside so someone finds the article through

Google, clicks one of those links, signs up and they earn a commission. So now you get the idea. The next part is

finding the right keywords to write about because the keyword you target matters a lot. Ideally, we want keywords

people are already searching for that aren't insanely competitive and where the person searching is already somewhat

interested in buying something, comparing options, looking for a service, checking reviews, pricing,

stuff like that. And for finding these, I like using Perplexity AI. You don't need the paid plan either. The free

version is enough. Let's say the topic I want to write about is YouTube growth. First, I'll ask Perplexity something

like provide a comprehensive list of the top main keywords related to YouTube growth and it cooks up this big list of

related searches people are making on Google. Then I narrow it down. I'll tell it from these keywords find bottom of

funnel and middle of funnel Google keywords around YouTube growth, YouTube SEO and related topics. Prioritize low

competition, decent volume keywords. And by bottom and middle of funnel, I basically just mean searches from people

who are closer to buying something rather than someone who's just searching to learn something. And now we get the

stuff I really care about. The keyword, roughly how many people are searching for it and how difficult it is to rank

for. I generally like looking for keyword difficulty below around 40% while still having a decent number of

searches. Take this one for example, YouTube video SEO service. Someone searching that is already looking for

help with YouTube SEO. So I could write an article around that search. Maybe something like the [music] best tools or

services to improve your YouTube SEO. And then inside that article, promote a relevant tool or service that has an

affiliate program. Or if I had my own digital product that solved that problem, I could sell that instead. And

one little thing I like to do is also send people to my newsletter. You can make one for free with Substack or

Beehiiv, which is what I use. And guys, if you've watched my videos before, you know I'm a big newsletter girl. I've

said it before and I'll keep saying it. Newsletters are one of the best monetization methods out there. If you

want to learn more about starting one, you can check out this video right here. [music]

And last up, we got social media management. I know this is probably something you've heard of before and I

also used to think it was one of those things YouTubers talk about, but not something that was actually possible for

a beginner. I thought you needed to be some crazy graphic designer, know how to make posts go viral, run ads, all that

stuff. But I ended up managing social media for some small businesses myself, which I'll get to how I found them in a

second. And what I realized is for the kind of small businesses I was working with, they weren't looking for some

social media masterminds. I didn't have to be Mr. Beast. The whole job was basically managing their Instagram,

Facebook, whatever they used, making simple posts and reels, scheduling them, replying to messages, keeping the page

active, and making sure everything stayed on brand. That was pretty much it. If you go on Fiverr, people are

making some pretty good moolah selling exactly this. Look at this freelancer here. Her cheapest package is around

$330. And for that, she makes three static posts, three carousel posts, four reels,

captions, and schedules everything for the month. Her highest package is nearly $1,000.

And look at the designs she's making here. These look nice, but they're not like some impossible graphic design

stuff. [music] You can make stuff like this pretty easily with the free tools we have now. The first one I use is

Canva. The free plan is enough for most of the work. They already have thousands of social media templates for Instagram

posts, Facebook posts, reels, carousels, whatever. I can just pick one, change the text, colors, images, and you've

already got something that looks professional. Canva does lock quite a few of its AI features behind the paid

plan, though. So, another free tool I like is Microsoft [music] Designer. This thing gives you a bunch of AI features

for free. You can generate images, remove backgrounds, remove objects, edit parts of an image. Plus, it has its

social media templates as well. And then there's Pamili from Google, which comes really useful when you're working with

these businesses. You can give it a business's website and it scans the site and pulls out their logo, colors, fonts,

style, tone of voice, and we basically get their whole brand kit. Then, it can automatically generate social media

campaign ideas and post designs that already match that brand. I personally like using it more for getting the brand

identity and quick design ideas, then doing the actual detailed designs in Canva or Microsoft Designer. So, how do

you actually get clients? You can start by putting up a gig on Fiverr for free. But, what worked for me was going

directly to small businesses. Look up small businesses in your local area on Google, check if they have social media

like Facebook or Instagram, and find businesses that either don't have any social media or post inconsistently or

used to post and then just stopped. And a little parting gift for you guys before we end the video. This is

something that worked really well for me with cold emails and DMs. Don't send like the same generic email to everyone.

Make it personal. I'd make maybe three sample posts specifically for that business, record a quick 2-minute Loom

showing them, and say something like, "Hey, I noticed you haven't posted since March, so I mocked up three posts for

you. Here they are. If you like them, happy to chat." And simple as that. So, that's going to be it for this video.

Love you. Bye.