RM 3,200 over 5 months doing AI social media content for a tuition centre and a salon
RM 3,200 across five months from making social media posts for two small businesses near me. Not retire early money, but it covers my car installment so I figured I'd share the honest breakdown since I keep seeing people ask about side income ideas beyond the usual grab and tutoring.
The catch is that every person you see in the content was produced by AI, not a single one is a real human. Both clients knew the deal before I delivered my first post and neither cared. What they care about is whether the posts look decent and bring in customers, not whether the person in the photo actually exists.
Client one is a tuition centre, been working with them since March. RM 400 a month for around 10 to 12 Instagram and Facebook posts covering enrollment promos, holiday programs, open day stuff. Five months so far, that's RM 2,000.
Client two is a hair salon I got connected to through a friend starting May. Same deal, RM 400 a month for hairstyle showcases and promo posts. Three months, RM 1,200.
My setup is pretty basic. Canva for layouts and text overlays, WhatsApp for back and forth with clients on revisions, and APOB AI on the character side, where you dial in a face once and every render after that delivers the same person without any drift. You get a batch of free generations each day and that was all I needed to vet the quality before spending a single ringgit. That consistency was the actual selling point because the tuition centre tried stock photos before and their feed looked messy when every post had a completely different person.
Now the honest part. The face consistency is good but it's not perfect. Across a batch of maybe 15 images, two or three will come out slightly off. The jawline shifts or the eyes look different or something just feels wrong. So I end up regenerating those, sometimes three or four attempts per image before it matches the rest. On a bad week that eats an extra hour or two I am basically not getting paid for.
I also tried making short video clips for the salon early on and completely gave up. AI video right now has this problem where faces float and warp between frames, and I was spending more time trying to get five usable seconds than I would spend making ten still images. Told the salon owner straight that video is not there yet and she appreciated the honesty.
Time wise I logged about 55 hours total across the five months. That works out to roughly RM 58 per hour which sounds decent, but there were Saturdays I spent two to three hours fighting with outputs and got nothing usable. So the per hour number flatters the reality.
Finding the first client was the hardest part. I printed sample posts and walked into the tuition centre to show the owner. Her previous setup was asking admin staff to snap photos on their phone and the quality was not great. She agreed on the spot. The salon was easier since my friend made the intro.
On the LHDN side since this is MalaysianPF after all, RM 3,200 is assessable side income. I'm keeping all my WhatsApp records and bank transfer screenshots. Not enough to shift my bracket but I'm declaring it anyway, just want clean records.
It's not a lot of money and I'm not quitting my day job over this. The tools have real limitations and it is more work than most people would guess. But for a side gig where the capital outlay was basically zero, five months of covering my car payment is a result I'll take.