How to Make Money With AI: 30 Ways to Try in 2024

2. Create Graphic Design Assets Using AI

Graphic design is another area in which AI has an increasing presence. While I don’t feel AI tools can compete with real, human graphic design skills, AI design tools like Canva can be an excellent way to create sellable creative assets like logos, branding material, posters, and advertising imagery. They can also help designers refine the marketable creative services they can offer on a freelance basis.

Canva, and other tools like Picsart, offer many templates and pre-set designs to create high-quality visuals. This could be helpful if you’re an aspiring designer and need support getting started as a freelancer. If you’re an experienced designer, you could create some exceptional graphic work quicker than ever thanks to these tools, helping maximize your earning potential.

If you want to make money as a freelance graphic designer, Upwork could be a good place to start. According to their site, graphic designers charge between $15 and $150 an hour, with an average rate of around $25. Of course, the rate will depend on your level of experience, portfolio, locations, and other factors.

3. Freelance as a Photo Editor (AI-Powered Photo Editing)

Photo editors can employ a tool like Picsart to dramatically increase their productivity, allowing them to edit more elements of more photos for their clients in less time, all to a high standard. This can maximize the money they can make.

Many of these AI photo editing tools are designed to be easy to use, so this is a way for non-professional or budding photo editors to start out with some simple photo editing jobs, bringing in extra money while honing their professional skills. At entry level (which still requires photo editing and photography expertise), you can expect to earn upwards of $20 per hour for these services. This will increase with your experience and your larger portfolio.

Picsart offers retouching features that can make a photographer’s work stand out even more. Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom have also introduced generative AI features to enhance images, fill in backgrounds, add details, and bulk edit large numbers of photos. These adds make the job of photo editors easier and faster.

You could partner with a photographer who would be keen to pay a talented, detail-oriented editor to outsource the time-consuming process of editing, leaving them more time to focus on creativity.

A bonus money-making idea: you can speed up the process of editing ecommerce or product photography, for yourself or on commission for other businesses, by using an AI tool for mass image editing or quick fixes, such as removing backgrounds.

4. Cut and Edit Videos as a Freelancer Using AI

AI editing also extends to video, and video editors can now create and edit videos in a fraction of the time. Non-professional or aspiring video editors could also use them to start making money through simple video editing side projects.

Even at entry level you can look to make around $15 an hour as self employed video editor. Do note that you’ll still need foundational skills and some kind of work portfolio to start making money this way.

Adobe Premiere Pro is well-known as the most proficient video editing software. It has now introduced AI features for generative edits, such as adding and removing objects or extending scenes, making life easier for video editors.

Premiere Pro may be challenging for beginners, but there are more user-friendly alternatives with potentially less professional results. PictoryAI and Lovo AI are two generative AI video platforms that can create videos for both business and personal use – for example, ad campaigns or photo compilations. Similar to how you would monetize blog posts, you can also post your own videos on YouTube and earn money from sponsorships or AdSense, if you gain enough traction.

5. Develop Apps and Chatbots Using AI Tools

You can use AI coding assistants to help create apps that you can sell or monetize. While programming knowledge is preferable, a very high level of knowledge is no longer essential. AI-powered no-code or low-code platforms are available to create and monetize apps, making this a more accessible activity for many.

With AI-enhanced freelance coding, you can work on a commission-based model to program virtual assistants, chatbots, and automation tools for businesses. Tools like Chatfuel or Bubble let you create customized chatbots that handle customer inquiries or automate marketing tasks.

Reading through an OpenAI community forum on this topic, I can see that many experienced coders and developers say you can expect to sell a chatbot app for anything between $1,000 and $10,000.

Alternatively, you can develop apps and market them in the Apple or Google Play app stores. If your app ranks in the top 800, you could earn around $3,500 a day, according to Fueled.

6. Sell Educational Content Created Using AI Tools

Another market you can enter with AI-generated content is education. Online education is a market that’s fast growing, according to the World Economic Forum. There is also a range of levels to cater to, so your content doesn’t always need to be highly advanced.

One example of monetizing AI educational content is online tutoring: you could charge around $20-$25 per hour working as an online tutor, on sites like Tutor.com or Skooli. You can use AI to support the creation of slide decks or lesson plans.

Another prominent example is creating online courses with the support of AI. You can then sell them on dedicated content marketplaces like Kajabi. You can use an AI writing tool (Jasper, Rytr, or even ChatGPT) to create online course material. I’ve read in multiple places that successful course creators can make between $1,000 and $10,000 a month. While the range is wide, it’ll take a bit of time and work to reach even the lower end.

You can then create video content with a tool like Synthesia, which creates lifelike speaking avatars to present your content in an engaging way without recording a voiceover or showing your face on camera. Alternatively, you can create an AI voiceover without video using a tool like ElevenLabs or Murf AI. These videos can be posted on YouTube, gaining monetization via sponsorship or AdSense.

7. Make Money with AI Art

The art world’s relationship with AI technology has been particularly controversial. Tools such as Midjourney, Dall-E 3, and ArtSmart have been used to create hyper-realistic images and generative art based on existing works, gaining positive and negative attention.

However, there are still ways you can monetize AI-generated art while respecting artistic integrity and the broader art community. First and foremost, avoid generating art that closely resembles existing artists’ work, and always be transparent about your work being AI-generated when selling it online.

A happy medium can be using AI art generators to experiment or expand upon your existing artistic practice. This includes creating different colorways for your existing prints, personalizing artwork for customers, or creating illustrations for your writing pieces.

Many artists sell their work on platforms such as Etsy, where you can potentially earn between $43,000 and $46,000 per year. However, this seems to be only if it’s treated as a full-time venture, and will take some time to work up to.

Bonus tip: Visual artists with large portfolios of work can train their own AI model using an AI tool like Dreambooth. The model will then generate new pieces in their own style without copying other artists.

8. Offer Social Media Management Services

Social media users are set to increase by 1 billion by 2028, so it’s still an extremely fruitful industry to be involved in. While you can generate social media posts and captions with AI, you can also position yourself as a social media manager and charge for your services. AI tools make this a more accessible venture than before.

Tools like Simplified offer an all-in-one tool for planning, creating, posting, and tracking social media content. You can use this tool to efficiently manage your own business’s social media to increase revenue through social media marketing. You can also offer your services to other businesses needing a stronger online presence with less manual effort.

Depending on experience, freelance social media managers can make anywhere between $20 to $150 an hour, according to Sproutsocial. This is a great opportunity for someone who’s already interested in or is savvy with social media.

9. Music Production: Offering Services or Selling Music

There are a range of AI music tools on the market, including KitsAI, Riffusion, and Mubert AI. Some AI software can be used to create fully AI-generated songs, which could be sold online for various uses. Other tools can assist in music production by adding or removing vocals, stem splitting, mixing, and mastering.

These tools offer producers a cost-effective and DIY way to work on their music without fully-fledged music production software, making their trade more lucrative thanks to AI.

If you’re thinking on entering the world of freelance music production, inexperienced producers can look to earn around $20 to $50 per hour. Please note, this is a field where, even at an entry level, you will need foundational skills and ideally more experienced mentors.

10. Digital Marketing Campaigns: Self-Marketing or Offering Marketing Services

You can boost your online presence by using an AI tool to create, optimize, and track your digital marketing efforts.

One way is to use AI writing tools, such as Jasper, to create personalized content marketing campaigns to better target your audience according to their specific demographic, location, and buying preferences. It’s been proven time and again that personlization makes marketing more profitable.

Another smart way to incorporate AI into your workflow is to adopt a CRM system such as HubSpot. This system has added multiple AI features to its platform to assist you with drafting high-quality content, honing your brand voice, generating social media captions, crafting email campaigns, and offering recommendations for improving SEO.

If you have existing marketing experience, you can make money by offering marketing services (that are optimized using AI tools) to others. Looking at averages, entry-level work could see you earn between $20 and $26 per hour as a freelance marketing manager.  

11. Build Websites from Scratch Using AI Web Builders

Building a website is no longer a particularly complex project, partly because popular web builders are adopting AI features to streamline and automate parts of the process.

After scouring Reddit to see what the professional community has to say, I’ve found that an entry-level website builder (with less than three years experience) could charge anything between $20 and $60 an hour for their services.

There are a number of tools you can use to create websites from scratch with AI, and potentially make a profit doing so for businesses that need help building an online platform. The top AI web builders include Wix, Framer AI, and Jimdo.

If you want to create your own website for a project or business idea, the productivity app, Notion, offers an AI web builder that’s easy to use and offers over 10,000 templates to choose from. Establishing and improving your online presence can help boost profits for your existing business.

12. Offer Translation Services Powered by AI

While online translators cannot be a replacement for mother-tongue human translators, they can speed up the process of translation.

If you speak another language, using an AI translator like DeepL or QuillBot can be a way to quickly translate longer pieces of text, leaving you with the simpler task of quality-checking and editing (again, that the last part is essential!).

By offering your translation services to businesses or people needing multilingual content, you can charge between $0.17 and $0.20 per word if you’re a native speaker and subject matter expert. I’d advise looking for jobs that fit your profile in this way.

Another way AI translators can add value to your projects is by allowing you to translate written content into different languages or by dubbing your videos in another language so that you can market your content to international audiences, increasing your potential client base. For this, you can use a text-to-speech app such as Murf AI or ElevenLabs. If you don’t speak the language, I’d advise running the final output by a native speaker to avoid  mistranslation.

13. AI-Powered Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one way to monetize online content via blogging or sponsored social media posts. When somebody clicks your link and makes a purchase, you’ll earn a small commission from the sale.

This process can be optimized and automated with AI tools like ThirstyAffiliates, Internal Link Juicer, and Post Affiliate Pro. These tools can help manage your links, track the performance, and optimize your content for SEO to drive more traffic to your website. This will increase the clicks and your commission earned.

For maximum benefit from affiliate marketing, it is helpful to have an established online presence with your target audience. This will enable a quicker return on your investment. If you don’t have a large online following, I’d first recommend investing in building it up so that you can make the most of your affiliate marketing efforts.

As mentioned above, Printify estimates that even quite basic affiliate marketing efforts can bring in around $40,000 a year, but I wouldn’t recommend you count on this from the word go!

14. Offer SEO Services or Boost your Site’s SEO with AI

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a huge part of digital marketing and online content. Without being optimized for search engines, even well-written content won’t get the attention it deserves as it won’t rank highly on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

The optimization process also requires a lot of technical knowledge and consistent research, so it’s a worthwhile industry to get acquainted with because it can be lucrative to charge for your services if you can optimize sites for search engines.

You can use AI SEO tools such as Semrush, Scalenut, and Surfer to perform keyword research, competitor analysis, site audits, and link building to help your web pages climb to the top of Google’s SERPs.

Those who are new to the industry can expect to make around $20 to $50 per hour as a freelance SEO. However, you will be judged on your ability to tangibly grow a website’s traffic, so don’t skimp on your upskilling and SEO expertise before you start this venture.

15. AI-Driven Automated Customer Support

Most of us are familiar with automated AI chatbots instead of a real human support agent. While it can sometimes be frustrating, AI powered chatbots are becoming more adept at solving customer queries, helping save businesses time and money. Repetitive questions can be easily dealt with, and chatbots can also help improve the quality and relevance of your knowledge base over time by reporting commonly asked questions.

But how to monetize it? You can offer your freelance coding services to businesses without extensive programming experience by using a no-code or low-code platform like Chatfuel or Bubble. You can sell customer support chatbot apps for anything between $1,000 and $10,000, according to many OpenAI community forum users.

Alternatively, you can use this method as a cost reduction for your own online business by creating your own AI customer support agent.

16. AI-Powered Voiceovers

You can utilize tools like ElevenLabs and Murf AI to convert text into AI-generated speech. Although robotic-sounding voices may not appeal to all audiences, significant advancements are being made to make AI-generated speech sound more natural. It’s worth exploring these options to save on the expense of hiring a real voice actor.

You can use AI-generated voiceovers to enhance videos on platforms like YouTube. With enough views, you can monetize your videos and generate income through affiliate or sponsorships partnerships. If you’re selling educational courses, AI voiceovers could be a crucial part of the material.

Additionally, AI-generated voiceovers can be used to help grow your presence on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, allowing you to add an engaging voice to your content without using your own.

17. AI Retail Inventory Management

Smart AI inventory management tools can use predictive analytics to offer a better sales forecast and help with cost reduction of running an online store.

This helps you accurately replenish stock in line with predicted demand, reducing wasted products and unnecessary investment. It means you can scale up an online store up into something bigger and more complicated that you could have done without the AI tool.

Some suggestions for tools that can help with predictive retail inventory management are Slimstock, Llamasoft, and Oracle Retail.

The way to make money here is to “run a successful online ecommerce store” that’s powered with AI inventory management to be as lucrative as possible. Interestingly, Oyova have crunched some numbers to show that the average online store in the US makes between $279.15 and $1,116.60.

18. AI-Supported Personal Finance

An indirect way that AI can help with making money is through optimizing your personal finances. While it may not make you more money, you can identify areas in which you can tighten your belt and contribute to long-term financial success.

Some user-favorite AI personal finance apps include Intuit Assist, a generative AI financial assistant, and YNAB (You Need A Budget), an online budgeting program with a generous free trial and bank-grade security measures.

19. Consulting and Strategy Development

If you have specialized entrepreneurial expertise that businesses may lack, you are in the ideal position to start charging for your consulting services. There are a few AI tools that can be helpful when starting out with your consulting career.

ChatGPT can be extremely helpful in organizing your insights and generating reports and client presentations. It’s also helpful to back up your advice with data insights, so using a tool like Google Analytics or AI-assisted CRM like HubSpot can help customize your advice to your client’s individual business performance.

If you’re thinking of entering this game, Glassdoor says that entry level business consultants in the US make between $47,000 and $83,000 on average per year. As I mentioned at the beginning of this section, you will need existing expertise.

20. Manage Paid Advertising Campaigns using AI

Another lucrative area of online marketing is paid advertising. This refers to ads posted on social media, websites, and search engines that are paid for by businesses commonly on a pay-per-click (PPC) model.

There are many ways to use AI to make money within paid advertising. Google Ads and Facebook Ad Manager use algorithms to segment audiences and target specific markets according to various differentiating factors.

You could also use an AI content generator that specifically supports ad creation, like Copy.ai, to create more eye-catching content for your ads and see an increase in user engagement.

You can use tracking tools likes Google Analytics or HubSpot, to track the performance of your ads and refine your strategy.

All of these can be offered as a service to paying brands or businesses. If you have some understanding of paid advertising already, you could start out as a freelance paid advertising manager for around $25 per hour.

21. AI-driven CRM and Customer Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is an important ingredient of any successful business wanting to turn casual website visitors into loyal customers.

This is another possible way in which you can offer your services to online businesses or optimize your own business’s online presence. If you’re offering this service, the going rate for CRM management is between $25 to $75 for a beginner-level freelance wage.

CRM tools like HubSpot make it easy to segment audiences according to various factors, such as age, location, or purchasing habits. You can then run targeted campaigns that are more relevant to buyers. HubSpot also offers AI features such as content writing, email writing, SEO recommendations, and a chatbot builder, all of which can boost a business’s customer relationships.

22. Ecommerce Store Optimization using AI to Boost Profits

If you’ve got an existing online ecommerce store, there are steps you can take with AI to better market your products or services to your target audience and increase your revenue.

You can use an ecommerce tool that uses AI, such as Shopify Magic, to get helpful AI suggestions, shortcuts, and generative features to help improve the appearance and functionality of your website.

Alternatively, you can employ an AI writing tool or an AI SEO tool to improve assets like product descriptions and landing pages, optimizing them for search engines. This can increase the traffic to your website and encourage more customers to make a purchase.

Based on my research, the average online store in the US makes between $279.15 and $1,116.60. Are you at the top of that bracket, and could you push higher using AI?

23. AI-Aided Transcription Services

As well as turning text into speech, AI tools can turn speech into text, effectively acting as a transcriber.

Tools such as Otter.ai and Notta offer transcription, using live and existing audio files. You can use these tools to take notes during your important business meetings, maximizing value and ensuring no important points are overlooked.

If you’re a writer or journalist, an AI transcriber can be extremely useful when holding interviews for your articles. Transcribing manually is very time-consuming, so you can win back precious time to spend on more profitable and productive activities.

You can get paid “per audio hour” or per word if you offer this as a service. The former tends to be more lucrative, ranging up to around $20 per hour. If paid per word, you’re looking at 1.5 to 10 cents per word. The use of AI can help you up your word count without compromising on accuracy.

24. Offer Investing and Trading Tips

One way in which AI can help you achieve financial success without needing to solicit a customer base or have your own business is by offering tips for trading and investing.

While AI can enhance trading strategies, it’s important to recognize that predicting the market with complete accuracy is impossible. Leading hedge funds do use AI, but it’s combined with human expertise to lessen the risks. Therefore, traders should not rely on AI, as real knowledge and experience are essential, especially when significant financial stakes are involved.

All that aside, if you’d like to dip your toe into AI investing and trading tools, there are a few that you can check out, including Dash2Trade, WienerAI, and ArbitrageScanner.

25. Saving Costs with AI Tools for Small Businesses

While this is not necessarily a business idea, small businesses can indirectly increase their profit with AI by outsourcing repetitive tasks, optimizing workflows, and identifying new business opportunities.

Small businesses can also benefit greatly from the free AI tools on the market since usage limitations may be less of a problem for smaller teams.

HubSpot offers a free CRM solution to manage your contacts, which also includes smart AI features to help speed up processes and identify ways to improve your customer relationships.

Free content generators and editors like Rytr and QuillBot can support small businesses by producing high-quality content that can help them better engage with their customers.

Lastly, free AI design tools like Canva and Picsart can be life-changing for running a professional social media account to help grow your business’s online presence.

26. Real Estate and Property Management Supported by AI

Real estate is another industry that can benefit from adopting AI-driven software to manage lead generation, client relationships, and property management – ultimately leading to more sales.

Popular tools like Zillow Premier Agent can help real estate agents connect with suitable buyers much quicker than doing manual research. This is also the case with many CRM systems including HubSpot, which is also an all-in-one sales, marketing, and customer support tool – and it’s free.

Real estate agents can use AI image generation to reimagine home interiors and communicate with designers during the staging process. Tools that can generate ultra-realistic results are best for this purpose, including industry leaders Midjourney or Dall-E 3.

How much money does this make a real estate agency or agent? McKinsey & Company claims AI has helped real estate companies gain over 10 percent or more in net operating income.

27. AI-Supported Manufacturing and Supply Chain

AI can significantly enhance manufacturing and supply chain management by using predictive analytics to anticipate maintenance needs, optimize stock levels, and streamline workflows.

This optimization leads to increased efficiency, reduced downtime, and maximized revenue. By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI tools can foresee potential issues before they arise, ensuring smoother operations and better resource management.

Uptake is an AI-driven SaaS platform designed for exactly this. Although it’s widely used in the fleet industry to prevent unplanned vehicle failures, Uptake’s capabilities extend to other sectors as well.

SparkCognition and Augury are additional AI platforms that make the most of your existing data to forecast trends, improve decision-making, and optimize maintenance schedules across various industries, making operations more efficient and reliable.

Recently, virtasant Enterprise AI claimed that using AI can lead to a 15% decrease in operational costs for businesses, helping reduce the $184 million spent yearly due to supply chain disruptions.

28. Consult as a Data Researcher using AI Insights

If you lack first-hand entrepreneurial experience but are a data whiz, you can generate income by interpreting data, predicting trends, and presenting companies with ideas for improvement.

There are a few platforms you can use to support this business plan, two of which are Alteryx and IBM’s Watson. Alteryx allows you to prepare and blend data from various sources and build predictive models without extensive coding knowledge.

In addition, IBM’s Watson applies AI-powered analytics, including machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), to uncover deeper patterns and trends. Watson’s cognitive services, like sentiment analysis and predictive modeling, allow you to extract valuable insights from unstructured data such as customer feedback or social media.

By combining the two, Alteryx’s data management with Watson’s AI capabilities, you can create end-to-end, data-driven solutions that help your clients improve their operations, predict future trends, and make informed decisions.

After doing some research, the starting hourly freelance wage can vary from around $10 – $80 for this work. Even freelance salaries can easily go up to $100,000+ a year for experienced professionals.

29. Commission-Based Recruitment through AI Talent Acquisition

Recruiters can benefit from AI-assisted lead generation to help target the right candidates for jobs and earn commissions from doing so. 

The top recruitment CRMs, including HubSpot and monday.com often utilize AI to help move candidates through the hiring funnel. Additionally, specialized tools such as HireEZ (formerly Hiretual) and SeekOut are particularly valuable for recruiters. These platforms use AI to scour the web for potential candidates, helping build comprehensive talent pools and reach diverse, hard-to-find demographics.

As it’s still emerging, there isn’t a huge amount of hard data on this topic yet, but some sources say that AI is helping recruiters cut costs of candidate screening by around 75%.

30. Optimize Supply Chains using AI

AI can significantly optimize end-to-end logistics in supply chain management, enhancing efficiency all the way from the factory floors to delivery. While this isn’t an idea for a side hustle or new startup, supply chain optimization is an essential way to add value to your existing business.

If you need convincing: virtasant Enterprise AI claims that early adopters of AI supply chain streamlining have seen a 15% decrease in costs.

Beginning with demand forecasting, tools like Blue Yonder and Forecast use AI to predict future demand, enabling accurate production and inventory planning. In post-production, quality control phases can benefit from AI-driven visual inspection tools like Qualitas and Landing AI, ensuring product standards are upheld.

Once you begin delivering products, route optimization tools like Route4Me and KeepTruckin can improve delivery efficiency by suggesting the best, most efficient routes for your drivers to take. Finally, Project44 and FourKite can improve overall supply chain visibility by providing real-time insights and shipment tracking.