677: 8 Ways to Use AI to Make More Money

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1:18What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. It's the business podcast you can actually apply. And today, I'm excited to share some crowdsourced AI use cases. Last month, I asked Side Hustle Nation email subscribers, hey, how are you using AI in your business? And I got some awesome responses. I'll sprinkle in my own examples as we go. And the first category here is content creation. It's Jane Havens here from Center for Pediatric Sleep Management and the Becoming a Sleep Consultant podcast. So I'm using AI mainly to speed up content creation. I use it to brainstorm social media posts and email newsletters.

1:57it's giving me just a rough draft so I'm not starting entirely from scratch. I'm also using it to build podcast outlines by feeding it just a few bullet points and asking for a suggested flow or interview questions. So a fun recent win, somebody actually found my sleep consultant certification course because they asked ChatGPT which course they should take, and it pointed them to me, which was so exciting. I'm still figuring out how to leverage this, but it's such a cool reminder of how AI is changing the way people find information. Overall, I would say that AI is helping me to save time and stay consistent and perhaps most importantly, focus on building real connections, which is what I truly love to do the most.

2:44Thank you so much for including me. I'm so excited to hear how everyone else is using this tool. That's a super fun win to have built up a reputation strong enough that the robots are going to recommend you. Now we're starting to see some more referral traffic from chat GPT as well. It's actually our top source of referral traffic lately, but still only between one and two percent of all side hustle nation page views. Nowhere near enough to account for the traffic loss that I attribute to shifting search patterns and AI answer snippets in the search results, but I suppose still better than nothing.

3:16And if you ask, hey, chat GPT, what are some of the best side hustle podcasts? It does show up. Side hustle show as the number one result. So better that than nothing at all. Now, lately, I've been asking ChatGPT for help in drafting email newsletters based on the text summary of the podcast episode. I fed it a few examples of past newsletters. Here's the writing style. And it's not yet to the point where it can be a direct copy and paste, but it's probably still faster than starting completely from scratch every week. And I like how Jane mentioned, hey, that frees up time to do the more important work focusing on customer connections and stuff like that.

3:51Bonjour, Akilah from patoplates.com. So my strategy is to use Ubersuggest's AI writer with keyword research and then get content ideas and ask that AI writer to choose blog title and subheadings. I do not like the entire blog content it writes, but the skeleton it suggests is already SEO friendly. And I write the meat of the blog content under each subheadings in my own words. And then now I use Hemingway app to edit. And the metrics that matter with Hemingway for me is the readability score that is less than eight. English is not my first language. So Hemingway edits my writing that are aligned with my message and thoughts.

4:36And I already received compliments about how easy it is to read and digest my writing in LinkedIn and media. From the SEO-rich blog articles, we create short-form content like carousels in Instagram, for example. And I'm also working on my newsletter with the same long-form blog content. So the workflow is to start with Ubersuggest to get SEO-friendly content, write your thoughts, edit it in Hemingway, and use the same content to publish short-form content in Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Thank you, Nick. Bye. I should note here that I've included links to all of the tools and resources in the show notes for this episode.

5:11All you got to do is follow the show notes link in the description and I'll get you right over there. I love Hemingway as well. And depending on your niche, I would argue that a readability or grade level score of eight might even be too high. Like if I can get my articles down to six or seven, I've seen them perform better. Someone even suggested they shoot for grade five to reach the widest possible audience with the simplest, easiest to understand language. but this is a cool call to get more mileage out of the content you're already creating. And if your site traffic is down, maybe you can use AI to repurpose some of your existing content in to social posts to try and engage people where they're at.

5:47But prompting and editing and posting, it still takes time. And this next clip aims to remove at least a couple of those steps. Hey there, this is Kathleen Selmans from Glow Social, where we help service-based businesses stay visible online without the stress. We've built our entire platform around AI to solve a huge pain point for local businesses. Many small business owners know they need to be on social media, but they don't have time to create content, don't know what to post, and can't afford expensive agencies. So we use AI to deliver daily content ideas and voice match posts tailored specifically for service businesses like dentists, real estate agents, and home service pros.

6:23What makes our approach different is that we're not just generating generic AI content, we're using AI to create authority building posts that match each client's unique brand voice. The impact has been amazing. Our users are saving five to 10 hours per week on social media management while maintaining a consistent presence that makes their businesses look open and credible online. If you're running a side hustle and want to scale without becoming a full-time content creator, AI tools that handle automated content generation in your specific niche can be a game changer. Check us out at glowsocial.com to see how we're making set it and forget it social media a reality.

6:59So lots of entrepreneurs getting some AI assistance on the content creation front. That's category number one. And I would put my AI assisted video creation in this category as well. I've been using a tool called Pictory to pull in dozens of stock footage and B-roll clips to make what I think is a pretty visually compelling video much faster than it would be to do all the filming and editing myself. Do they go viral? No, they don't. But they do get views. They can rank in search. They give me another chance to be discovered in YouTube and in Google. They beef up the existing content on the site and they make a little bit of passive income through YouTube ads.

7:38The next category is less about content creation and more about marketing and promotion. And the first idea that came through here was from Marie from jphandywoman.com. She didn't send me a voicemail, but she sent me an email about the creative way she collects more positive customer reviews for her local service business. She says, I use AI to write sample testimonials for existing customers. I use personalized info in the prompt, such as please write a positive testimonial for a recurring home maintenance slash handyman business written by a busy doctor with two young kids at home. The doctor grew up in an apartment, so he's unfamiliar with all the tasks required to maintain his home and is delighted to have found a reliable, handy person to take care of everything so he can focus on his family and his career.

8:24Then Marie sends this AI-generated testimonial to the customer for them to adopt, edit, ignore as they see fit. But since it's personalized, she says the customer often thinks, hey, this is totally me, and they copy and paste it into the Google Business profile or another review site. I think this is a really creative way to reduce the friction. You need more reviews, but how can you make it easy for people to do it? And I should totally do this when I get a nice email about the podcast. Hey, would you mind copying and pasting this into Apple podcast reviews? Here's the link. So thanks to Marie for that tip.

8:55And while Marie is using AI to improve her visibility and social proof in Google, other entrepreneurs are using it to pick up traffic and sales on other platforms. Hey, this is Brooke from BlueWillowEmbroideryDesigns.com. I use AI almost every day. I sell on Etsy and I also have my own website. But specifically for Etsy, I've been using AI for listing titles. I also use it for descriptions and tags. Obviously, I make some tweaks and changes if I'm not happy with what I see. But some of the things I do when using AI to make it more specific is like I might use a prompt like give me an Etsy title for my listing of X and then I say make sure that this is optimized for SEO.

9:39And if I want to go even further, I might say target this to a certain type of creator. And then with my description, I'm doing the same thing. I usually ask it to give me a two sentence listing description using the titles and the keywords from the title. And then with the tags, I might say, give me 13 tags for this listing based on the description and the title above. And then I ask it to separate this with commas and make sure that the tags are 20 characters or less. And so it's been really helpful for getting those things out there really quickly. I like it. We know Etsy can be a bit of a volume game.

10:17So anything you can do to speed up the listing process definitely helps. Hi, Nick. My name is Courtney Stitch, and I'm a Pinterest marketing and design expert. I own Seaside Creatives, a Pinterest marketing and design agency, as well as a digital product store that I just started. I wanted to share with you how I utilize this for Pinterest for my clients, as well as how I utilize it for my own marketing on the Pinterest platform. So I love ChatGPT because it actually will, when given the correct prompts or prompted in a certain way, I should say, will actually spit out some amazing Pinterest pin descriptions and titles.

10:52It's helped me create boards in the platform. So as you know, Pinterest is a search engine and it relies heavily on keywords. So this prompt is one that I use all the time and it works wonderfully. And so I simply ask ChatGPT to create a SEO keyword description. And let's just say one of my clients just created a blog post on chocolate cake. So we're going to be creating anywhere between 7 to 10 posts for that post. post. So of course for each pin you create, you create a different pin description, you know, vary it somewhat. But I want to make sure that that pin is picked up by Pinterest and is understood by the algorithm and is found in search by our amazing audience.

11:35And so if they created this blog post on, like I said, the best chocolate cake recipe, I'm going to put that in there. So create an SEO keyword pin description for the best chocolate cake recipe. Sometimes I put in highly targeted keywords such as chocolate cake, chocolate desserts. I also might add in the keyword sweet treats. I try to put in five to seven keywords here and then I also add in a CTA that reads, download your free recipes at Sweet Street Today. Then it will ask you for slightly different toner variations. Sometimes it'll ask if you want to create a pin or, you know, a camera template, which I find helpful, but I will be very honest with you, I don't utilize AI pins very often.

12:23I love designing. It's one of the things that I really enjoy about, about the work that I do for my clients and myself. So I just tend to do my own designs. And the other thing I wanted to share about this was that the one thing you do need to kind of look through is any additional fluff, words that you don't necessarily need in your descriptions for Pinterest. Sometimes chat GPT, it's great at making it conversational, but sometimes it's too conversational. So you can shorten the pin description a little bit. It will generate board titles, board descriptions, pin titles, and it really, really chops down on the amount of time that you're spending trying And I think of these wonderful, you know, pin titles or pin descriptions.

13:06So I hope that this was really helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm happy to help. You don't want to sleep on Pinterest as a potential traffic source, but it's also kind of a pain to create seven to 10 unique pins or semi-unique pins and pin descriptions for the marketing of your posts. So hopefully Courtney's tip can help you out there. I've got more AI use cases coming up, including getting coaching and even using it to create money-making products right after this. one of the tools i personally see make a huge difference for business owners is quo formerly open phone it's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before just with a new name when you're running a business you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity the quo formerly open phone this is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications it works through an app on your phone or your computer so no more using your personal number as your business line no more carrying two phones around with Quo your team can share one phone number and collaborate on customer calls and texts just like a shared inbox so anybody can jump in to keep response times fast and this is where it gets super cool you can set up Quo's built-in AI agent in just a few minutes to handle calls after hours answer customer questions and capture leads on autopilot I want to invite you to get started for free plus side hustle show listeners get 20 % off your first six months at quo.com slash side hustle.

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15:40Just go to indeed.com slash side hustle show right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash side hustle show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. The next way SideHustleNation is using AI is almost as a thought partner or a silent or low-cost executive coach. Hey Nick, love the show and appreciate the chance to contribute. Doug Collins here, best-selling author of the Home-Based Business Guide to Write Off Almost Anything and founder of the homebusinesstaxsecrets.com. One of the most viable ways I use AI isn't for content creation, it's for strategy and decision making.

16:20I prompt ChatGPT to act as a strategic business coach and advisor who has a deep understanding of my business, marketplace, and ideal clients. I talk through new ideas, challenges, and growth plans with it. Together, we brainstorm, kick around my ideas and thoughts, map out launch strategies, analyze opportunities. We even run SWOT exercises and find blind spots I actually missed. I also have a take on the role of my ideal client to review my ideas, offers, sales pages, and emails. It gives me fresh audience-based feedback. It's helped me save time, launch faster, improve conversions, and make sharper decisions.

16:58I'm more confident going to the marketplace because of the feedback Loopit gives me. It's like having a thinking partner or sounding board on demand. Thanks again for putting this together and really looking forward to hearing how others are using AI too. This can be pretty eye-opening, and it was one of the first use cases I played around with with ChatGPT. Here's what we have so far. What's missing? And it would help fill in the gaps. And then in this year's episode where I interviewed RoboNick, my AI alter ego, it actually came up with some decent suggestions for future projects and weak spots in the Side Hustle Nation business.

17:30Like any coach, it's not going to have all the answers, but it can ask questions and provide guidance to lead you to coming up with the answers. Why, good morning, Side Hustle Show. This is Mark Larm, and I am a 57-year-old man, uneducated, addicted to drugs and alcohol and self-abuse for most of my life. And recently I have discovered AI and I have turned everything around and now I consider it the level playing field. It gives people without money and education the chance to level up and compete with the big boys. So I have a ton of ideas, a ton of businesses I'm starting. I actually invented a piece of fitness equipment, FX Bells, and that's bells with a Z.

18:17I started using AI for marketing, and then I started using it as my own personal roundtable. So I have taken the greatest minds and copied them into my own roundtable so I can get motivated daily. And then I was learning about prompt engineering when I realized the better the prompt, the better the response. And I said, that's my problem. I've never prompt engineered that inner voice inside my head and your great reset was born. So I now have a book available on Amazon, at least in Kindle right now called your great reset. I have a YouTube channel called your great reset, trying to help people build that firm foundation, which starts with getting the body healthy.

19:06And I say we turn stepping stones into launching pads. Have a blessed day. Bye. I never prompt engineered the inner voice inside my head. That might be my favorite line. The better the prompt, the better the response. Garbage in, garbage out, right? It works whether you're talking about what you're putting into these AI tools, what you're putting into your body, or the content and messaging you're putting into your head. This idea of creating your own virtual mastermind group, your own personal roundtable, like Mark called it, is really interesting, especially if you're just starting out and don't have an entrepreneur or a peer group.

19:39hey, what would Tony Robbins say about this? What would Warren Buffett say about this? You could potentially get feedback in the voice of well-known mentors without the price tag of one-on-one coaching. Hi, Nick. It's Josh Thorpe. I'm an educator and my side hustle is independent publishing around education issues. I've written a book called AI for Students and I teach in the book and with my students, I teach using AI in more creative ways, less as a vending machine, that's just kind of pumping out content for me, and more as a thinking partner, like a kind of a conversation partner. This is really useful when I don't have someone immediately available, a human who wants to talk through an issue with me.

20:18I use then AI as a kind of a practice audience, a stage to think on, a spark for creativity. And what's interesting about this is that it doesn't matter if AI is giving me really perfect intelligent answers or not, it's actually more important the thinking that I'm doing. The act of having this interaction is stimulating my imagination. It's egging me on to solve problems and so on. And I find that I can use AI quite minimally just for a short amount of time. And that will get my thinking sort of jump started for the day. This is the tool I recommend. This is the approach I recommend. Think more, not less with Gen AI.

20:50So if folks want to check this out, you could look up AI for students on Amazon. And if you know a student or a teacher or a parent who might find this useful, please let them know. And I've got lots of supporting material around this stuff at promptlybooks.com, promptlybooks.com. Well, thanks, Nick. Bye. A practice audience, a thinking partner. I like those phrases. I could feed it, for example, a summary of a podcast episode and ask it to come up with 10 potential hooks or email subject lines, or even, hey, here are 10 potential episodes I'm thinking about doing. Which do you think is going to resonate the best?

21:24It could help me come up with compelling episode ideas or even product ideas that would be helpful or relevant to the audience. And the next category of AI usage is exactly that. It's looking for help with product ideas and then taking it one step further and getting help in building out the actual products. Hi everybody, I'm Becky Beach, digital business scaling coach of coachbeckiebeach.com. And today I want to take you behind the scenes of how I use AI to create and sell digital products, specifically printables and spreadsheets on Etsy and Shopify. When I first started out, everything took forever.

21:55I'd spend hours just trying to come up with product ideas or designing layouts from scratch. But once I started integrating AI tools into my workflow, everything changed. I was able to scale faster, stay creative, and get more done in less time without sacrificing the quality. Here's exactly how I do it. I start with ChatGPT, which is my creative partner. I'll prompt it with something like give me 10 printable planner ideas for busy moms or what are some budgeting spreadsheet niches people are searching for right now. It gives me product ideas, content outlines, and even ready-to-use spreadsheet formulas or table layouts.

22:26I then use it to write listing descriptions, social media captions, and email copy. It's honestly one of the most powerful tools in my business. Next, I move on to visuals. That's where I use MidJourney and ReCraft.ai. MidJourney is amazing for generating beautiful themed artwork and illustrations. Let's say I'm making a self-care planner. I'll use MidJourney to create soft aesthetic backgrounds or cover designs that match the vibe that I want. I just type in a few words and it gives me professional looking images that really help my product stand out. Then I use ReCraft.ai to turn those visuals into print ready designs.

22:58ReCraft is especially great for icons, charts, layouts, design, anything clean and functional. Once the product is ready, I create a few mock-ups, write up my listing, and then hit publish. The whole process from idea to live product can take just a few hours now. Thanks to AI. If you're running a digital product business or thinking about starting one, these tools are game changers. You don't need to be a designer or a tech expert. You just see a good idea, the right prompts, and a willingness to experiment. So that's my workflow. Check GPT for content and strategy, mid-journey for visuals, ReCraft.ai for design and polish.

23:30It's streamlined, efficient, and it's helped me grow my passive income in a big way. If you want to learn how to build your own digital product empire, head to CoachBekiBeach.com. I've got tons of courses and other resources to help you get started. And of course, we've got a full episode with Becky. I'll link up in the show notes, number 582, if you want to go check that out, along with all the resources and tools that she mentioned. Hey Nick, this is Dr. Nathan from OutSchool and SchoolApplicationsPrep.com. I've been building my part-time educational side hustles since 2021, and I've seen moderate revenue growth each year.

24:05Last year was my first time reaching five figures, and I'm on pace to exceed last year's earnings in 2025. Still, I've mostly been trading time for dollars, like with any typical job, so I began to create and offer digital courses in 2023 to diversify and scale my earnings with passive income. Clearly, AI tools can help me to speed up the course creation process, so I've been using ChatGPT for research and writing first drafts of course scripts, Pictory to turn those scripts into micro-learning lessons, and Kahoot to stitch the Pictory lessons together into courses while also creating interactive assessments.

24:42ChatGPT is still my favorite and most useful tool. It helps me prepare live lessons with the kids I teach, and I also teach kids how to use the tool responsibly and effectively in one of my out-school courses. Pictory has been a game-changer for me because it allows me to improve the quality of my courses above my first course, where I created Google Slides and recorded myself while walking through them. I seldom use the video clips that Pictory's AI recommends, but their vast library allows me to always find something I like. Another AI tool I dabbled with is Magic School, which is essentially a Gen AI prompt repository.

25:17It accomplishes what ChatGPT does, but leads you through the process of providing the most useful context, resulting in more precise output. Finally, I recently began using the AI tool within BlueKit, linking to Conmigo, to create quick multiple choice quizzes that can be gamified. I use this tool for younger kids who don't have the attention span to sit through a formal class, but who will happily play a game that rewards their demonstration of knowledge through repetition. In short, all of the AI tools that I use now are valuable, but I'm learning how to multiply their value in combinations with each other while building my digital courses one by one.