BEST Claude A.I. Side Hustle Nobody is Talking About transcript

In this video, I'm going to show you the best AI side hustle for a complete beginner that almost nobody's talking about. And I know that sounds like every other clickbait video out there, but stick with me here. Because right now, everyone's telling you to go start some kind of AI business. Start an AI agency, build an app with AI, start a faceless AI YouTube channel. And those can work, but for a normal beginner, most of them are way harder than they make it look.

So, I'm going to walk you through exactly how I would approach this if I was starting from zero today. We're going to narrow it all the way down to one AI business that actually makes sense for a beginner. You don't need to show your face, you don't need to go chase clients, you don't need any audience, you don't even need to learn coding. So, let's get into it. If you're new to the channel, my name is Shawn, and so far I made around $9 million across a bunch of different online businesses.

And I've coached thousands of people on how to do this themselves. I personally made over a million dollars in four different ways. And what I'm about to show you in this video is, in my opinion, the best way for beginners to start making money online out of all the methods that I've tried. So, let's start with the business models everyone's talking about. And I want to be clear here that I'm not hating on any of these.

They all work for the right person. I just want to explain my thought process on why I personally do not recommend these. So, first you got the big one, AI agencies, building automations and AI systems for other businesses. It sounds very cool. It is a cool model, and it definitely works. But here's the thing nobody really tells you. It's a client-based business. So, you have to go find businesses, talk to them, you got to sell them, and then actually deliver results or they will fire you.

So, if you're looking for a business model where you don't want to deal with people, an agency is basically the opposite of that. Then you got building apps and softwares with AI. Basically, everyone on the internet is vibe coding right now. And yes, it's genuinely cool that you can build stuff faster than ever before. But, with that being said though, you still need to actually understand what you're building. It's not like a complete beginner who knows nothing about coding can all of a sudden start building softwares.

Because the second your app breaks, and it will, you need to know how to fix it. A lot of beginners build something that half works, it crashes, and now they're stuck staring at code they don't understand. So, if you're willing to learn how to code, which, you know, takes a lot of time, but it's possible, if you're willing to do that, go for it. I just don't think it's the most beginner-friendly business out there. Then you got faceless AI content, like AI YouTube channels, faceless AI Instagram pages, and a variation of those.

The dream that they sell you here is passive money while AI makes all of your videos. But the reality is, you're competing against millions of other channels for attention. The algorithm doesn't owe you anything, and most of these channels make basically nothing for months before they ever see a single dollar, if they ever do. I've been doing YouTube for a long time, so I can tell you from experience that for you to start making money from AdSense, you have to have 1,000 subscribers and I believe 4,000 watch hours.

Obviously, you can do it a lot faster, but me personally, it took 1 year for me to get there. So, basically, I was making videos, uploading consistently for 1 year without making any money from YouTube. So, based on experience, I think it's not way to make money online, although it can be good. So, the pattern here is every single one of these is asking a beginner to already have something, right? It's asking you to be technical or, you know, to be good at sales and finding clients, or you already have to have an audience.

And the truth is, most people pick these because they're told that it's the new hottest business model, not because they're actually the easiest path, because, let's be real, everyone online is selling a dream. So, if you're starting from zero, I don't think these are the best business models. So, if you just forget the hype for a second and just ask one simple question, what is AI actually good at? The answer is it's good at producing content and information at scale and fast.

That's basically the core of what these tools do. You give it a prompt, it gives you words, ideas, and structure. So, if that's what AI is best at, don't you think the smartest business to pair it with is one where the entire product is content and information? And that is a digital product. A digital product is basically something you make one time and sell it over and over again with nothing physical to ship. So, let's compare that to almost any other business.

There's no inventory sitting in your garage. There's no shipping that you got to deal with. No employees that you have to hire and manage. No customers messaging you at midnight asking you where their package is. Again, you make the product once and pretty much every sale after that is profit. So, you also have super high profit margin as well. And I'm not just making things up over here, right? I've sold pretty much every type of digital product there is from low ticket to high ticket, to subscriptions, basically everything.

Once again, I've made over $9 million from selling digital products, all kinds of digital products. So, when I tell you that this category is the best way to make money online, it's coming from experience. By the way, this is just a side note, but most gurus online who teaches different business models that are not digital products, like you hear some people recommending real estate investing as the best business or buying laundromats and retail businesses as the best way, which I think is crazy, but some people talk about that, right?

Or as we talked about earlier, some people teach the agency model or whatever. The thing is, most of them recommending those business models actually makes the majority of their income from selling digital products, like their courses, softwares, and ebooks. So, they sell you a dream on why this business model is the best and why you should do it, but behind the scenes they actually have a digital product business. So, why don't you also do the same?

Now, I got courses, I got softwares, but at least I'm not lying here saying this business is the best and I'm doing something else. At least I'm doing the digital product business myself, still doing it to this day, and also teaching it. So, in my opinion, digital products win, but there is a bunch of different digital products you can sell, like again, courses, softwares, little PDFs, ebooks, and many, many more. Now, I've sold them all, so I can tell you from experience which one is best in my opinion.

First, you got courses. Super good money, but you actually need real expertise, people trust, and an audience to sell to. It took me years of posting free content on YouTube just to get to, once again, it took me 1 year to get to 1,000 subscribers, and it took me another year to get to 10,000 subscribers. So, that's 2 years. Then I finally was able to start monetizing my audience by creating a course. So, if you can do it right, if you can build an audience, selling courses, very profitable, not going to lie, but it's definitely not beginner-friendly unless you want to spend years building an audience first.

It's definitely not like you can whip up a course and start making money from day one. Then you got software, but now you're right back to building and maintaining something technical. And as someone who's now building a software myself, technically I'm not building it, right? I'm working with a team of developers who actually understand this stuff, because I have no idea how the actual developing side of things work, but I see what my team is doing, right?

My team of developers are working on. So, I see the behind the scenes. So, I can tell you that it's super technical, and it's definitely not something you can do without understanding coding. So, if you understand it, or if you're willing to learn, once again, it's probably going to take you a year or multiple months at the minimum if you're going super hardcore to learn, but I just don't think it's beginner-friendly.

Next, you got paid communities. But for that, you basically need a personal brand for people to even want to join. Like, what's the point in, you know, creating paid communities when nobody knows about you? Like, they're going to be like, "Why should I join your community?" Then you got little templates and PDF downloads that people tell you, and this is actually one of the hottest trends on YouTube right now, is that people tell you to whip up a PDF download in minutes using, you know, AI, and list it on your own website or use a Gumroad, Stand Store, you know, Etsy, those kind of websites, and sell it, and you can make a bunch of money.

Well, the reality is, it doesn't work like that, right? They're most likely lying to you. Because if you're selling on your own website, once again, there's zero traffic. So, you have to go and drive all your own traffic by paying for ads or posting a crap ton on social media. Which, if you're willing to do that, once again, every single one of these businesses work if you're willing to do the work. But is it the best?

Is it the easiest, simplest? I don't think so. And finally, you got ebooks. And And a beginner, ebooks basically beats every single one of these. I think ebooks is the best digital product to start with because you don't need any audience, you don't need to show your face, you don't need any personal brand, and the startup cost is really really low. And the best part is AI is getting really good at creating high-quality ebooks.

So, it's almost like the tool and the product were made for each other. You can build this entire thing behind the screen. Nobody ever has to know it's you. Although, if you want to put your own name on your book, that's completely fine, but you can use name to publish books. It's extremely common. Like J.K. Rowling from the Harry Potter series is a pen name. So, again, it's a common practice in the publishing space.

There's nothing shady about it. You don't need any cameras, you don't need to post yourself on social media, you don't have to try to sell people in the DMs, you don't have to do any sales calls. All you need is a laptop, an internet connection, and access to the correct AI softwares. So, now that we established the fact that digital product is probably the best business model to get started with as a beginner, especially using AI, and within the digital product space, selling ebooks probably is the most simplest, direct, most beginner-friendly way to get started.

Now that we established that, you probably got a ton of ideas flowing in your mind, right? You're probably thinking, "Oh my god, this would be a cool topic to write about. This would be a cool book to create." You're probably getting a lot of ideas, which is actually one of the biggest mindset shift that I have to tell people when we start coaching them. And that is that you do not make money by writing about whatever you want to write about because I completely get it.

A lot of you have a story you want to tell or a passion you want to put on paper. And that's great, you know, I think it's beautiful, but that is a hobby. It's not a business. You make money by writing about topics people are already searching for and already buying. You're not chasing self-expression, you're meeting the demand that already exists, and that is a completely different thing. And if you're thinking, "But Shawn, I'm not a good writer," don't worry because you're not writing a literary masterpiece here.

In this business model, you're solving a specific problem for a specific person who's already out there looking for for answer. And AI helps you draft the whole thing and help you throughout the entire process. So, you can do this without being a good writer because I'm originally from Japan and English is my second language. I'm not a good writer. I mess up my grammar constantly, but I still made a lot of money doing this.

So, now we know that digital products are the best AI side hustle and ebooks are the best digital products to sell. Now, we need to identify what is the best way to sell these ebooks, which we'll cover next because this is what makes this business model undoubtedly the best for beginners. So, where do you actually sell these ebooks? Well, the best place to do so is on Amazon. Yes, anyone can start selling books on Amazon.

It's actually pretty easy. Amazon lets anyone publish an ebook for free through a program called Amazon KDP. KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing. You might have heard people call it self-publishing or Amazon Digital Publishing. It's basically the same thing. So, you upload your book, which is just a PDF file, it goes live on the Kindle Store, and Amazon pays you a royalty every single time someone buys it. There's no need to go through a publishing company.

It's completely free to sign up, no monthly subscriptions, nothing, right? Amazon just takes a small cut once you make a sale in exchange for basically doing everything for you, which I want to talk about here. So, here's why Amazon specifically is the answer and not selling your books on your own website or some other platform like all these other YouTube channels are talking about, which by the way, they only recommend, you know, Wix or Hostinger because they're making money off of affiliate commissions or, you know, they're getting paid a sponsorship rate.

Anyways, here's why you want to sell on Amazon. Because on every other platform out there, you have to bring all the traffic because if you build a website on your own or you use Gumroad, Stand Store, whatever, then you're sitting there thinking, "Okay, now how do people actually find this website?" That's exactly the part that beginners struggle the most because you're a beginner for a reason. You have no existing traffic, right?

Getting traffic is its own full-time skill that takes a long time to learn. But, here's the thing, Amazon already has the traffic. Hundreds of millions of people on the website right now, credit cards already saved on their account. Amazon literally has buy now with one click, which is the craziest way to, you know, squeeze as much money as possible from the customer. And people are on Amazon actively searching for something to buy.

And we all know Amazon is by far the biggest online retail store in the world, and they're constantly expanding, right? Amazon is just going to take over the world. They're not going anywhere. So, you're not creating demand, you're stepping in front of the demand that already exists. And it's a completely different game. And it goes even further than that. Because if you think about all the stuff you normally have to handle yourself in a business, like payment processing, product delivery, customer service, dealing with refunds, getting your product in front of people, those are the things you normally have to do if you do any other online business models.

But by selling on Amazon, Amazon does all of this for you. They take the payment for you, they deliver the book instantly, handle the support and the refunds, and provide their own search and recommendation system that actually puts your book in front of people who are likely to want it. So, you're basically using the biggest store on the planet's entire machine. And this is why it's very beginner-friendly because you're not doing a lot of the things that you normally have to do and learn in other businesses.

Now, some people say that, "But Amazon takes a cut from every sale. If you sell on your own website, you can keep everything." But here's the thing. Yes, Amazon takes a cut, right? But that cut is nothing compared to the months of your life and the money you'd burn trying to build up your own traffic from scratch. Plus, you still got to pay for your domain, for your own website, like you have to pay monthly for whatever, you know, website service you use, hosting.

There are a lot of fees that you still got to pay anyways. So, you're basically paying Amazon to hand you customers. And I think that is the best deal in business. Anyways, I did a lot of talking up to this point. I wanted to really explain the overview of how this works. But now I want to show you what this actually looks like in practice. So, it's basically four simple steps. Step one is the topic. You go look at what's already selling on Amazon and pick a proven in-demand topic.

Notice I didn't say, you know, pick whatever you're passionate about. You pick what's actually selling. So, always go with demand first. We can use Claude for this to get ideas. So, I asked Claude to give me 30 ebook topic ideas that are trending right now that I could write about. And as you can see, we got 30 topics like AI tools for everyday productivity, quiet quitting, micro-investing for beginners, and so much more.

For this example, let's go with decluttering your home and mind because from personal experience, I know that this niche is profitable. Now, once you have the book topic, step two is to create the title and the outline. Again, Claude can make this very quick. So, let me show you. First, I asked Claude to tell me the biggest pain points readers are struggling about decluttering your home and your mind. The reason why you want to identify pain points is because people buy nonfiction books to solve a problem, right?

When people buy a book on decluttering, it's probably because they're struggling with clutter in their home, you know, stress and anxiety from the clutter, right? Or if it's a decluttering your mind book, then they're struggling with overthinking, anxiety, negative thoughts, right? So, those are the problems that you have to identify so that you can go and create a book that solves that. So, identifying pain points is actually the first step before you actually create the outline.

So, these are the pain points we got like emotional attachment to possessions, not knowing where to start, clutter keeps coming back, family members won't cooperate, and more. So, I will say pick two to three that you think is the most important to solve, and we move on to the book title. So, I asked Claude to give me 10 title ideas for a book on decluttering using those pain points. I said to make them short and catchy, but also make sure they clearly show that it's a decluttering book.

And this is just for the main title, by the way. We're not talking about the subtitles here. So, we got 10 catchy main title ideas: Let It Go Already, The Clutter Cure, Clear the Mess, Clear Your Mind, Stop Drowning in Stuff, The Last Declutter You Will Ever Do. So, I like this one, so I'm going to go with The Last Declutter You Will Ever Do. Then we move on to the second prompt here. So, I like the title The Last Declutter You Will Ever Do.

Please give me 10 subtitle ideas. The subtitle should clearly describe the benefits the reader will get by reading the book. Please incorporate power words and numbers to make the subtitle as attractive as possible. Focus on a longer subtitle rather than a short one. Because creating a good book title is a formula. There is a template for it. These are the things that you want. And these are the subtitles we got. So, the last declutter you will ever do.

How to permanently clear your home, silence mental chaos, and build five powerful habits to keep clutter gone forever. The proven seven-step system to eliminate overwhelm, reclaim your space, and finally experience the calm life you deserve. And a couple more, which I think these are pretty good. Next, I asked Claude to create the outline. So, we're not even writing the book yet, right? It's very to take these steps.

Now, we're creating the outline, which is a skeleton of the book. And once we confirm the outline, then we can go and write the book. And this is exactly how we create a high-quality book that actually sells on Amazon. A lot of people who watch my videos, just because I titled the video like how to write a book with AI, and you know, basically talk about writing books with AI, they automatically assume that I'm teaching people to churn out AI slop and pump it out on Amazon, right?

But that's not what we're doing. As you can see, focusing on quality is number one. The good news is, with the help of AI, creating high-quality books is becoming easier and easier. So, this is what I asked. Please create a detailed eight-chapter book outline with three subchapters that have three sections for a book on decluttering. The title, The Last Declutter You'll Ever Do. Subtitle, The Proven Seven-Step System to Eliminate Overwhelm, Reclaim Your Space, and Finally Experience the Calm Life You Deserve.

Here's the book outline. So, we got introduction, three subsections, right? So, the more detailed the outline, the better. Chapter one, subchapter 1.1, section one to three, 1.2, 1.3, Identifying Your Clutter Personality. Chapter two, The Calm Life Vision. Chapter three, The Declutter Blueprint. Chapter four, The Let Go Method. Chapter four, The Room-by-Room Reset. And on and on until the end. Now, just because AI gave you this, doesn't mean you have to follow it exactly, right?

These are just ideas. AI's here to help you with the idea generation, but it's not meant to replace you. This is very, very important. So, if you don't like any of these chapters, you can change it. Once you finalize the book outline, you can start generating the book one section at a time. So, as you can see, that's what I asked. Please write 1,250 words for chapter 1, sub chapter 1.1. And that's what we got. We have section 1, meet Sandra.

She's a 38-year-old teacher, mother of two, and by most account, a highly capable woman. She manages lesson plans, school schedules, after-school activities, and a part-time freelance job on the side. But every evening, when she walks through her front door, something in her chest tightens. And on and on, right? And it's pretty good. Then we got section 2, then we got section 3. Then I asked the same thing for chapter 1, sub chapter 1.2.

And we got that. Then I asked the same thing for sub chapter 1.3. And we generated that. Now, what's very important to keep in mind here is that what we got here is the first draft. You have to read through the entire thing. You have to edit the content, right? Humanize it because AI output, even with Claude, you know, Claude is very smart, but it's not perfect. You will start noticing repetitiveness, you'll start noticing errors like stories are not matching up.

You'll start noticing that the information is very basic and surface level, and it never really goes deep into the actual tips or how to do things. And that's not just a Claude issue, it's basically, you know, all generic AI tools do this. But basically, the entire process is to generate one section at a time, move it into a Google Doc, edit the content, make sure that it's good, and then you generate the next section, move it into Google Doc, edit the content, make sure it's congruent with the last chapter, generate the next chapter, move it into Google Doc, edit it, on and on and on until the end.

So, once you're done with the writing, next is to create a book cover. Now, this is where a lot of beginners get lazy and lose because a buyer decides in about like 0.2 seconds whether they want to click on your book or scroll right past it. So, creating a good eye-catching book cover is extremely important. However, Claude isn't the best. Actually, it's pretty terrible when it comes to cover designs. As you can see, I asked it to create a modern book that sells on Amazon, and this is what we got.

Like, it's actually really bad. So, instead, you can use ChatGPT, which which a little bit better. This is the cover that I got from Chacha B D. The last declutter you'll ever do. The proven seven-step system to eliminate overwhelm, reclaim your space, finally experience the calm life you deserve by Shawn Doughty. So, I think it looks pretty good. You know, not the best because I just kind of whipped this up, you know, real quick.

But, it's not bad either. So, the next step for you is to publish the book. You want to upload it to Amazon KDP. Once again, it's completely free to publish, and your book is usually live on Amazon in front of real buyers within about 24 to 72 hours. I have a separate video on how to sign up to Amazon KDP and how to upload your books. The whole process is not super long, but obviously if I show you in this video, then you know, it's going to add additional 20-30 minutes.

So, I'll just link to my other tutorial video in the description below. So, make sure to watch that and follow along. Now, once your book is live, you can start benefiting from the huge Amazon organic traffic that exists. Of course, this doesn't mean that you can rely 100% on Amazon and do absolutely nothing. If you just upload your book and forget about it, the crazy part about this is you're most likely going to still make some sales.

I cannot guarantee anything, but I've been doing this for a long time. I've coached a lot of people. You still will probably make some sales. Just by uploading to Amazon and forgetting about it. But, some sales here and there is just like two bucks here, two bucks there. You know, maybe it'll pay for your Netflix every month, but it's not going to make you life-changing money to where you can quit your job and have more freedom.

So, if that's your goal, then you want to help Amazon by supplementing it with your own marketing efforts. But anyways, you basically rinse and repeat this process over and over and over by publishing the next book and the next one and the next one. Make sure you do each step properly. Make sure you do proper research. Make sure you find topics that are actually in demand and actually create good books in that profitable niche.

But as you keep publishing more and more, you'll keep stacking your income more and more as well. So, that was the overview of how all of this works. Of course, this just a simple overview, and there are a lot more to this, which if you want to learn more, I got a ton of videos on my channel that you can start watching. Now, I showed you the entire process using Claude because Claude is trending nowadays, and basically, you know, using Claude in video titles always do well.

And Claude generally is amazing. I use Claude all the time. So, I'm not trying to criticize Claude or anything, but I do want to keep it real with you because I don't want to be one of those people who sells you a fantasy. Just because Claude videos gets a lot of views, again, a lot of people are making videos on Claude, but sometimes what they're saying and, you know, what's actually the reality is not the same. So, you saw in the screen share here that I had to prompt Claude.

I had to guide it, right? And the first results that I get is never the final thing that I should go with. As I said earlier, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, any of those generic AI tools, they're tools. You know, they're not magic money buttons. You have to learn how to prompt them properly. You have to do some back and forth. You have to edit the content a lot because by default, AI writes pretty generic stuff and it makes a lot of mistakes.

So, anybody telling you that you can just type one prompt and print out a best-seller is straight-up lying to you. And here's the biggest thing most people miss. AI does not know what makes a book actually sell. It'll happily write you a beautiful book on a topic no one's searching for. So, the wrong topic plus perfect writing still equals zero sales. The book can be amazing, but if no one's looking for it, no one's going to buy.

So, the real skill here isn't actually the writing. It's the strategy behind it. Knowing what to write before you ever write it. And this is why all that generic one prompt AI slop gets rejected or dies on Amazon. It dies because it gets bad reviews, gets refunds, and it sinks to the bottom. So, Claude is amazing, but it still requires you to work with it and know what to ask. But if you want a custom AI that's built specifically to make books that sell on Amazon instead of the generic slop that gets your book buried, that's exactly why my team and I built coauthor.ai.

Coauthor is built specifically for this business. It handles trend-aligned research, structures a book the way readers actually want it, and produces output at a quality level that generic AI tools just can't match. That's how you make sure your book wins on cover, title, and content, the three things that make your book stand out from the competition. So, if you want to check out coauthor.ai, the link is in the description.

So, now that you've seen how this works, there are basically two biggest beginner mistakes people make. The first version is the lazy one. You type in a prompt, generate a whole book in 10 minutes, you publish it, and you do nothing else. And then they're shocked when it makes them zero money. But, it does that because it's generic, right? It reads like a robot who wrote it, and the topic was random. The second mistake is not checking demand.

The person who says, "I'm going to write the book that is in my heart, my story, my passion." And they pour months into something no one is searching for. And then their heart is crushed when it doesn't sell. So, here's why both of those are the same mistake. Both of them ignored demand. One ignored quality, one ignored the market, but neither one started with the question that actually matters. What are people already looking to buy?

You want to get that question right first, put your effort and your AI on top of it, and now you're cooking. Get that wrong, and it doesn't matter how hard you worked or how good the writing is, it's not going to sell. Well, actually, if you want to sell few copies here and there, again, Amazon is so big that just by being on Amazon, I'm pretty confident, although I cannot guarantee once again, I'm pretty confident that you'll make some sales.

But, again, there's a big difference between making a couple bucks here and there and making, you know, 5, 10k a month or more, like many of our students are doing. So, to summarize everything, out of every AI business you could start, agencies, building apps, faceless channels, I think digital products are the best because content is what AI does best. And out of all the digital products, I think ebooks are the best because they need no audience, no face, and basically no money to get started.

And out of everywhere you could sell your ebooks, Amazon is by far the superior option because they hand you the traffic and run the whole store for you. At least, this is what I believe based on my own experience building a bunch of different businesses and making a decent amount of money online. Again, it's important to remember that this isn't the magic push-button thing the hype guys are trying to sell you. It's not effortless.

You do have to learn the skills, and you do have to put in the time or the money. But I think it's a lot easier than other businesses. And anyone, you know, whether you're an introvert, you got no degree, no audience, if you're starting from total zero, basically I was that, right? I was an introvert, no college degree, no audience, starting from zero. I was actually 40K in debt. So I know that anyone who actually decides to put in the work can do this.

Because I am proof and so are a lot of my students. So, what do you think about all this? Do you agree? Do you see the opportunity or do you disagree? Do you think there are other better business models out there? Let me know in the comments. And if you want to learn more about how this business model works, you can check out this video. And if you want to shortcut the process and work directly with us to grow your publishing business, you can check out our mentorship program, Road to Hero.

It's the first link in the description. Thanks for watching. Thanks for making it until the end. If you enjoyed this video, leave a like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next one.