r/AIIncomeLab

For those early in your AI freelancing/consulting journey like me - what's actually been the hardest part of getting your first handful of clients?

Not the work itself - the actually getting in front of people willing to pay part. Is it knowing who to approach? Actually reaching out? Standing out? Knowing what to even say?

I've sent a LOT of cold emails and LinkedIn messages over the past few months. I know response rates tend to be low for cold outreach, but honestly it's soul-destroying - and I'm starting to wonder if I'm doing the wrong thing entirely.

So for those a bit further along: what actually started working for you? And did it ever stop feeling this brutal - or did you find a completely different way in?

My web designer friend from California is passionate about building websites, and he wanted to make a full time business out of it. We talked a lot, and I gave him a lot of advice and stuff he could do to scale his web agency. He used to cold call, get a few clients, and run paid ads, get a few clients, but the cost of ads would just make him no profit. Cold calling was also tiring, and he couldn't keep it up while doing all the other stuff. So he wanted a real system, a blueprint he could follow every day.

This is exactly how my friend scaled his web design company. Copy it if you feel stuck and don't know where to find your next project.

➜ Run 2 types of email automation targeting businesses without websites and businesses with websites.

➜ 1. For businesses without websites: scrape businesses with no websites, set up a sequence, and add 3–5 follow-ups. They either block you or you land a project.

➜ 2. For businesses with websites: scrape businesses with websites, analyze each business website, and turn flaws in outdated design, unstructured layout, no mobile optimization, and SEO issues into ready to send outreach emails with 3–5 follow ups. You can do both types of outreach in a tool called Swokei.

➜ 3. Have everything in one place: your leads, CRM, inbox, and calendar. You can also have that in Swokei.

➜ 4. Focus on SEO because it compounds over time. Fix your technical site SEO, and also blog or make content with high-intent keywords. Use a tool called Soro.

➜ 5. Host websites on a tool called Hetzner. It's very cheap and reliable, and you don't need to keep switching hosting platforms. Everything in one place.

This is the whole workflow: automation in the background that lands you clients while you focus on building websites. Replies, meetings booked, CRM, everything in one place.

With all that being said, he ended up buying a Mercedes-Benz with the $70k he made. 😂

That's not something I'd recommend, though. I'd personally reinvest it into the business or put it into stocks.

Imagine you had to start from scratch with no existing audience or customers. You still have access to today's AI tools, but you can only focus on one business model.

Where would you put your time first, and what would your reasoning be?

Hola! Hace unos días vi un reel de Instagram en el que un chico ganaba dinero con música generada con IA. Básicamente generaba una canción con Music GPT, adquiría sus derechos descargándola (así de simple) y después la subía a Spotify mediante otra aplicación.

Esa canción le generó 30€ en un mes (esto es sin ningún plan de promoción ni nada parecido).

Alguien sabe si realmente eso es posible? Porque eso significaría que, generando 20 canciones, los ingresos serían de 600€ al mes (lógicamente es una cifra aproximada, dependiendo de las reproducciones de cada canción).

Me parece una forma demasiado sencilla de ganar dinero como para ser real. Aunque a la cifra de ganancias habría que restarle el dinero que cuesta Music GPT (debes pagar suscripción para descargar las canciones) y la otra app para subir las creaciones a Spotify.

So, I went into a rabbit hole and researched all the possible side hustles that can pay you well in 2026

1. Vibe Coding

One of the most worked side hustles for folks. You can build websites using AI prompts instead of writing code.local business cab be the perfect to start

2. AI Automation

Build automation tools and workflow for businesses to avoid repetitive tasks. It requires a good understanding of AI tools and business workflows

3. Social Media Management (AI-powered)

Use AI tools to create content and manage social media for businesses and creators.

4. Content Writing

One of the most underrated yet highly paid skills. This includes copywriting, SEO blogwriting, website content, ghostwriting

What of the side hustles actually work? Please anyone who made good money please share your opinion?

I’m not indirectly doing anything. The info was there. Just someone hating because they don’t have a skillset to make money. Yall are a joke

If you’re looking for a solid way to make extra money on your own schedule, AI data annotation and RLHF training are actually incredibly viable options right now. You’ve probably seen some of the crazy hype on social media promising easy thousands, but the reality is much more grounded. It’s an excellent, high-flexibility gig economy option, but it definitely comes with its own headaches. The biggest selling point is that you can truly log on and work from anywhere at any time, and the baseline pay for general writing and evaluation tasks usually beats out standard food delivery or rideshare apps without putting wear and tear on your car. Plus, you get a front-row seat to how major language models are being shaped behind the scenes, which is pretty cool if you're into tech.

That said, we need to talk about the flip side because the industry can be deeply frustrating if you go into it blind. The main drawback is that the work is entirely task-based and project availability can fluctuate wildly, meaning you might have an amazing week followed by a stretch where you're stuck in an empty queue waiting on a new allocation. The onboarding assessments on platforms like DataAnnotation, Outlier, or Alignerr can take weeks to hear back from, and the communication from corporate support is notoriously slow and opaque. You’re essentially working in a silo, and when project guidelines suddenly change or a project channel disappears overnight, you’re left to figure out the technical changes completely on your own.

You don't need a computer science degree to get started, but you do need a solid level of baseline technical literacy, sharp logical reasoning, and excellent writing skills. Generalist roles usually require you to fact-check statements, write complex prompts, and explain in meticulous detail why one AI response is structurally or factually better than another. If you have a background in areas like coding, mathematics, or legal writing, you can unlock much higher-paying specialized tiers, but even at the entry level, attention to detail is everything. If you’re tired of trying to figure out these platform guidelines by yourself or just want a transparent space to share vetted leads and compare pay rates, hit me up or drop a comment below and I'll send over an invite link to our community Discord so you don't have to navigate the grind alone!

Not sponsored, not an affiliate thing, nothing like that. I built a free tool (a scored quiz builder for lead qualification) and it turns out ChatGPT recommends it when people ask about qualifying leads or building quizzes without code.

Some numbers so this isn’t just a vague claim: about a third of my total signups over the last few months came directly from people who found the product through ChatGPT. Most of those are just using the free tier, which is fine, that’s the whole model. But one of them stuck around, kept using it, and about ten days after signing up (found through ChatGPT), upgraded to a paid plan for custom branding and a custom domain.

I never talked to her. No sales call, no DM, no funnel. She asked ChatGPT a question, got pointed at my tool, used it, liked it enough to pay for it.

I didn’t do anything clever to make this happen beyond writing genuinely useful content (blog posts, comparison pages, template pages) and making sure AI crawlers could actually access my site (turns out Cloudflare was silently blocking most of them for a while, fixed that and traffic showed up almost immediately).

It’s not huge money yet. But it’s the first time I’ve seen a completely organic, zero-touch path from “someone asks an AI a question” to “someone pays me,” and it’s made me rethink where I should be spending time versus where I’ve been spending it.

Happy to answer questions if anyone’s curious about the mechanics.

I got 10 million views in a month posting AI microdramas on Instagram Reels.

Here's what I did:

Most of AI video content on IG reels are one-offs. It pops, gets views, disappears, and you're back to zero. A show is different. People show up within 30 minutes of every post asking where the next episode is. They argue about the characters. One character I wrote as the villain got so popular that people begged me for weeks to bring her back, so I did, in another show, and she's still the most requested character on the account.

Every episode has three jobs.

Hook. The first five seconds stops the scroll. Nothing else. Get this wrong and nobody sees the rest.

Body. The plot moves fast. Every scene raises the stakes or twists them. The job is to make the next episode feel like a mandatory watch.

Cliffhanger. End on a question they need answered or an emotion they can't shake. This is what makes them follow you and come back tomorrow.

Then post every day. You watch three things: skip rate, retention (my best video run past 50 percent all the way through), and share rate. Then write the next episode directly towards whatever the audience reacted to. Read the comments and they tell you what they want.

The biggest unlock for me has been using an agentic studio for show creation. Consistency is one piece of it. Same characters, same locations, same props across all my episodes, because the second any of it drifts, the illusion breaks and people leave. But it goes way further than that. The agent helps structure the episode, tighten the dialogue, lock the styling. Designing the show and building the shots with an agent next to you instead of fighting the tools alone is a lifesaver.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments!

Last Christmas I was at my parent’s place, pretty bored just watching TV on the couch, and realised I wasn’t really satisfied with my life.

My job wasn’t going anywhere, and I felt like I really had no direction in life.

I had spoken with a friend around that time, who had vibe coded his website for his business, and it looked really cool.

So I spoke with ChatGPT to see what i could possibly build that could be interesting, but done in an innovative way.

As I worked in sales already, it suggested that I lean into my own experience, and build something for my own use case.

I’d been using LinkedIn automation tools to help generate leads, but I kept getting warnings from LinkedIn from the tools I was using, so I wasn’t using them regularly.

So, after a lot of back and forth conversation with AI, I realised that there was a big opportunity to create a tool that was safer than anything else out there;

Every tool I’d been using operated either on the cloud or used plugins - there were almost none that simply operated on your desktop, and this would most likely remove my issue of getting warnings and appear natural to LinkedIn.

So, I decided to build something for myself primarily, in the sales job that I was in - could I build something for myself that would help me generate more leads without risking my account as much?

Turns out, I could.

It definitely wasn’t easy, there was a very steep learning curve in terms of learning how to build something from scratch, not only learning how to build something and make architectural decisions, but building something in a safe, structured way too.

There were tonnes of errors and bugs at first, but I spent a huge amount of time on hardening the tool to ensure that it’s highly unlikely to break, and even if it does, it’s quick/easy to diagnose and implement fixes.

It was a complex build as it’s essentially two code bases - a web dashboard where people can control their campaign settings and messaging sequences, with an inbuilt CRM, unified inbox, analytics etc., along with building the software itself, which automates LinkedIn in a browser on people PC’s.

And not only did I have to build it, but I had to make sure it actually worked. So I used it myself throughout the testing phase.

I made sure that the tool had strict daily limits on actions, randomised delays between connection requests and follow up messages, along with effective messaging, written by Claude Sonnet via API.

And it worked - in my first campaign in my old job, I got a 40% acceptance rate and a 25% response rate.

What I realised along the way though, was that working on the tool itself was much more enjoyable than my sales job, so, I decided to quit my job and go all in on building and working on the tool.

I made it into a business and took a leap of faith.

Now, the tool has had 280 signups to free trials, many of whom converted into paying customers, and so far hovering around $3.7k in revenue since launching in April, completely bootstrapped.

Not a life changing sum yet but the first few months have been very promising, and there’s clearly a demand for a tool that’s safe for LinkedIn accounts and effective at booking meetings.

Anyway, I hope this story inspires people to follow your passions and keep going!

'Software prices are rising. Crews are shrinking. We built something different.' - Storyboard Canvas Ai

Calling all bedroom business / Ai developer analysts!!!

I have seen a number of posts where posting founders have been torn apart by the commenters - i would like to encourage this.

Vapourware? Ai vibe code slop? How was it done? Is it possible for a struggling storyboard artist with no coding history to design, develop and release a software suite to rival adobe or google? What Ai models did we use? Did we/I just prompt a brand? Is this all just a delusional post from a random dude on reddit with no real world value? Or a good vibe? Useful? Commendable?

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Before 2025 I was one of the best storyboard artists in the world. A wonderful career of over 20 years, honing my craft, hundreds of thousands of hours, to master my craft and get paid...

In January 2025 I noticed a huge decline in income - i put my head in the sand and decided to ignore the unavoidable inevitability that a computer could really compete with a human artist.

6 months turned into 8 and nothing was getting better for me = i had to adapt or get crushed into bankruptcy...

I chose to fight, to evolve, to learn and create - just like I always have.

Its been 10 months since I founded Storyboard Canvas Ai, and this morning at 4am we released v7, Live now across the globe accessible in 25 languages..

The All-in-one film production software suite for video pre-production which replaces the complex daily toolkit for videographers, producers, directors, writers, artists, crew, production designers and anybody who contributes to the script to screen video, film, tv and entertainment production process.

Sure its not a reward ceremony 'I would like to thank my mum and Jesus..' just yet, this is just another milestone on a marathon that has just started, but I feel confident enough to share here.

'One login that replaces a £4,500+/year stack of single-purpose film production software and outsourced talent for as little as £15/month, built around the people on set, not the people replacing them. Powered by DollyAI™

A tool to empower human teams, not replace them.'

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Check us out and drop your comments I would love to hear what everyone thinks. Please do share any recommendations, or anything we can do better. I believe in building in the open and new to reddit if anyone can point me in the right direction of reddit communities we could benefit from.

Thanks!

So I’m writing this for anyone running a web agency who’s struggling to get consistent clients or build scalable systems. I understand how stressful it can be because I was in the exact same position.

I’ve been running my web agency for 4 years, but only in the last year did I start using AI seriously, and honestly it changed everything for me.

I used to build websites on WordPress and do all my outreach manually. It worked, but it was inconsistent and exhausting. Once I started implementing AI into my business, I went from constantly chasing clients to doing around $20k/month recurring.

This is basically what changed for me.

At first I was targeting businesses with no websites, but switching to businesses that already had websites worked way better.

There are SO many businesses with outdated websites that clearly need upgrading. Plus, these business owners already understand the value of having a website because they’ve already paid for one before. It’s way easier convincing someone to improve something they already believe in than trying to convince someone from zero.

The second big shift was moving from manual outreach to automated email outreach that actually feels personalized. Instead of sending generic emails, I now use a tool that mass analyzes a business’s website and generates personalized outreach based on things like design issues, SEO problems, site speed, mobile optimization, and overall user experience.

The third thing that changed everything was offering a free redesigned draft version of their current website.

Realistically, who says no to free?

I can build these drafts really quickly using Claude Code, and most of the time they already look way more modern than the client’s existing site. Once business owners see a better version of their own company in front of them, selling becomes way easier.

Another huge mistake I used to make was just sending preview links through email.

They open it later when they’re busy, nobody’s there to explain the improvements properly, and eventually the lead goes cold.

Now I always present the website live on Google Meet and try to close them on the spot. That alone massively increased my close rate.

Also, always charge upfront for the website build, but don’t ignore monthly recurring revenue. Hosting, maintenance, edits, SEO, ongoing changes, etc. That’s where stability comes from if you actually want predictable income every month instead of constantly hunting for new clients.

For anyone curious about the tools I use, it’s honestly pretty simple.

Swokei for outreach. I upload my lead list there and it analyzes each business website, scores it, and turns flaws in design, SEO, speed, and mobile optimization into personalized outreach emails automatically. Pointing out actual issues on their website increased my reply rates massively.

Claude Code for building websites. And honestly, people saying AI built websites don’t perform well are just wrong. If you know what you’re doing, you can build pretty much anything now.

And Cloudflare for hosting client websites.

That’s pretty much the system I run now.

In the last 12 months I’ve managed to sell around 200 websites.

And before people ask, no, I don’t run some massive agency with a huge team. It’s literally just me and my partner. The only reason we’ve been able to move that fast is because we automated almost everything and built systems that actually scale. The best web designer in the world will eventually lose to some random teenager using AI and systems properly. That’s just where things are going.

One of the biggest changes I made was completely quitting manual outreach. It takes too much time and it’s impossible to scale properly. A lot of people automate outreach already, but most of them just send generic “we can redesign your website” emails that everyone ignores. What we do is different. We scrape thousands of businesses, automatically analyze their websites, and generate personalized outreach based on actual issues on their site like bad design, poor mobile optimization, weak SEO, slow load times, layout problems, and stuff like that. So instead of manually checking every website and writing every message ourselves, the entire process is automated from analysis to ready to send campaigns.

Another thing that changed a lot for us was automating SEO blogging. SEO compounds hard over time and once your articles start ranking, businesses start coming to you instead of you chasing them. That alone changed a lot for us.

The other massive shift was how we build websites. I used to be a full WordPress developer and spent way too much time building everything manually. Now we build almost everything with AI. It’s way faster, delivery is easier, and clients care way more about the final result than how the website was actually made.

For anyone wondering, the stack is pretty simple.

Swokei for leads, website analysis and outreach campaigns.

Soro for SEO blogging.

Claude Code for building websites.

Cloudflare for hosting. That’s pretty much the entire setup.

Most people running agencies are still doing everything manually and burning themselves out for no reason. Systems and automation change everything.

yes. but not the way most people think.

the assumption is you generate some AI images, post them, fans subscribe and money comes in. that's not how it works. subscriptions are almost irrelevant. set the price near free and use it as a filter. the real money is PPV content sold through chat conversations.

$20k all time on my page. over 80% came from chat, not subscriptions. you can check my profile for proof.

the AI side that actually matters is the chatbot, not the content. anyone can generate images now. the part that separates pages doing $500 a month from pages doing $5k+ is whether the chat converts. that means fan memory, knowing when to pitch, knowing when to just talk, and re-engaging fans who go quiet before they're gone for good. you can do it manually at the start and honestly i recommend it. you need to know what converts for your specific audience before automating anything. but you'll burn out fast replying to fans at 3am and that's when the automation starts making sense.

the content takes 3-4 hours a week. the chat automation runs 24/7 without me.

the hard part is traffic. getting instagram followers that actually convert to fanvue subscribers takes time and the right niche. there's no shortcut.

so yes you can make money on fanvue with AI. the tools exist. the model works. but the chat side is where it's won or lost, not the content.

I am a graduated CS student where i want to be a freelancer in AI and Gen AI development.

I would appreciate if you gave me any guide in that and how the market perspective to fresher in this.

For me, it's still web design.

I know a lot of people are going to disagree because everyone keeps saying it's saturated, AI is replacing developers, and it's impossible to get clients.

Honestly, I couldn't disagree more.

I think web design is actually easier than ever if you approach it differently.

The mistake I see almost everyone make is targeting businesses that don't have a website.

You see it all over Instagram Reels.

Someone opens Google Maps, finds a business without a website, calls them, and asks if they need one.

The problem is that business has probably already been contacted by 10 other web designers.

And if they still don't have a website, there's a good chance they either don't see the value in it or don't have the budget for one.

My targeting is completely different.

I only target businesses that already have a website.

There are three reasons.

First, there are an insane number of businesses with outdated websites that desperately need updating.

Second, if they already have a website, they already understand the value of having one. You don't have to convince them that websites matter.

Third, they're already paying for a website, so spending money on improving it doesn't feel like a completely new expense.

Now the question becomes...

How do you actually get their attention?

I don't run normal cold email campaigns.

I'm not uploading leads into Instantly, writing a generic sequence, adding three follow-ups, and hoping for the best.

Instead I use a tool called Swokei.

I upload a list of businesses with websites, and it automatically analyzes every website. It finds things like outdated design, poor layouts, weak mobile responsiveness, slow loading speeds, and SEO issues.

Those findings are then turned into personalized outreach emails.

Not some boring reports that business owners don't care about.

Actual emails explaining what could be improved and why it matters to that specific business.

That lets me run outreach at scale while still keeping every email relevant.

Once someone replies, honestly the hard part is over.

At that point you can build a free website draft with AI, invite them to a Google Meet, walk them through the redesign, and close the deal on the call.

AI has made building websites ridiculously fast.

That's why I think targeting and outreach matter far more than your ability to build a website.

This business model has been incredibly good to me.

I'm curious though. if you had to start a digital business from scratch in 2026, what would you choose?

been running an AI character on social and Fanvue for a while. want to give the version nobody writes about. not the hype, not the "its a scam" take, just the real mechanics.

the money isnt in subscriptions. subscriptions are maybe 10 to 15% of revenue. the actual income comes from content unlocks where fans pay for specific stuff, and a small number of people who spend way more than everyone else combined. one person can outspend 50 regular subscribers easily.

costs are near zero once the system is built. the character generates content at almost no cost per image. no studio, no model fees, no burnout. main ongoing cost is a rented GPU for occasional training runs.

what makes it not passive is the audience side. responding to messages, keeping engagement up, posting daily. thats where the revenue actually lives and it takes real time.

platform that works for AI content is Fanvue. OnlyFans actively bans AI accounts now. Fanvue officially supports and verifies AI creators.

happy to answer anything about the model, income structure, the tech, whatever people are curious about.

They reached out by email, it’s all legitimate. I don’t really see a reason not to do it. I am wondering what kind of traffic I could expect, maybe someone here has experience. TIA