4 BEST AI Side Hustles To Start in 2026 (for Beginner)

0:00 What's the best way to make money with AI as a beginner? Well, after making over a million dollars per year for the last 3 years, I've shifted my entire focus to AI because I believe that there's a very short window of time to actually take advantage of it before it's too late. So, today I'm going to compare my four favorite AI businesses so that you can pick one and start making money as soon as possible. Now, the first business is one that I've been passionate about for quite a while, and that's making videos for YouTube. My channel, although it isn't even the biggest in the space, has made me a few million dollars just over the last couple years. And that's crazy to say because just a few short years ago, I was sitting in my room trying to make videos just like this one. And every video I made got no views. It felt like I was going nowhere. But today, starting on YouTube can look a lot different.

0:46 There's a few different types of videos that you can make using AI that pull millions of views. But by far, the easiest way that people are grinding YouTube using AI is with these screen saver videos. Take a look at some of these videos. They're basically just AI generated art for people who want some kind of screen saver for their TV or laptop. And you might be wondering who's watching this. Well, apparently a lot of people. These videos get insane amounts of views. And a lot of times they're not even animated. It's just a still image that's played for a few hours at a time. I guess people use these to put on their TV or even use on their computer as a simple screen saver. And the more artwork the channel uploads, the more screen savers they have and the more views they get over time. And what's insane is there's entire channels dedicated to posting these types of

1:31 videos. This channel specifically has over 83,000 subscribers. And literally all they do is just post these screen saver art videos. If you take a look at some of their more popular videos, you can see that every few minutes they'll change up the artwork based around a specific theme. But a lot of their videos are just one image played the entire time. With AI tools like Nano Banana, making artwork like this is honestly easier than it's ever been, and it can come out looking even better than these examples. All they're doing is generating artwork that looks nice based around a theme. And then people who want a screen saver for whatever season that is, they'll load up the video and just leave it playing. Now, although this specific channel hasn't posted in the last 9 months, SocialBlade estimates that this channel is getting a little over a million views per month and is making between $300 and $500 a month.

2:18 YouTube pays creators an advertising revenue split of 55.45 where creators are able to keep 55% of the ad revenue and ad costs are calculated using RPM or revenue per mill which basically just means that YouTube is going to pay you for every,000 views that you get on your video depending on the type of viewer that's watching that video. But typically for generic channels you're going to earn between$1 to $10 per thousand views. Some creators make more and some make less. It depends on the type of viewer who's actually watching your content. But just to be conservative, if they're getting a million views a month at a $1 RPM, that'd be around $1,300 a month from these super simple videos. And I found a few other channels doing the exact same thing, like this one, where they're uploading these flower screen savers

3:03 every single day. But if we look up the channel on SocialBlade, you can see that they're getting about 2 million views a month and gaining around 500 subscribers per day. With two million views, this channel is easily making between two to $7,000 per month. And that's using a pretty conservative RPM. Now, this is already one of the easiest businesses on the list, but some people have taken it even a step further. Take a look at this channel for example. They're posting boring history secrets, which are just stories that people use to fall asleep to. Videos like these are usually generated using some kind of storytelling AI like Gro's storytelling mode and then it's read aloud over top some AI images just like before. And although these are still really simple, some of these videos are getting millions of views. And the cool thing about this is that you can get AI to do

3:49 everything from coming up with the story to making the images and even doing the voice over. For example, we can use Grock to create a boring story about history. We can use nano banana AI to make images for each part of that story. Then we could use a tool like 11 Labs to create the voice over so that our video feels and looks complete. Please subscribe >> now. Like with any AI tools, a few of these are paid, but the more in-depth you go and the more tools you use, the more of a barrier you create around the products and videos that you're creating, which makes it harder for someone else to compete in the same niche. So even for a tool like 11 Labs for $11 a month, it's definitely not bad. Plus, you get access to not just the voiceover AI, but a bunch of other AI tools that you would likely use when you're creating these types of videos.

4:36 And you could use this exact same strategy to target even more profitable niches. Like making simple finance explain videos, for example, you make a much higher RPM for each,000 views. My channel, for example, makes anywhere from 15 to $20 per,000 views I get because the people watching my videos are more interested in buying products. So, if done correctly, this can be not only an easy option, but it also has a really high income potential. So, for that reason, for beginners, this one is super easy to start. For startup costs, since it's a super minimal business, you might only need an editing software and a couple cheaper AI tools. So, you might spend $10 to $50 a month just to get this business running. And since this is such a highinccome potential business, even if you're making super simple

5:21 videos like the ones that we looked at at the beginning, I think you can make anywhere from a couple thousand all the way up to maybe $10,000 per month if you start one of these channels. The cool thing is that once these videos are posted, they can continue to get views far into the future. But that brings us to the next idea on the list, and this one is my absolute bread and butter. One of my favorite all-time businesses, print on demand. This business made me my first ever million dollars and literally changed my life. I went from cooking pasta in a fast food restaurant for $7 an hour to making over $10,000 a month in profit selling t-shirts online in less than a year. Now, the way that this works is you sign up to work with a company like Printify so that you can sell a bunch of white label products like t-shirts, sweatshirts, or mugs with

6:07 your unique designs and artwork printed on those products. What makes this business truly special is you don't have to buy and hold any inventory yourself or even print and fulfill the product orders yourself either. When you choose to work with a company like Printify, you only ever pay for the product after you've already sold the digital version. Once someone finds your product listing online and they buy it, then you pay Printify to print the product and get it shipped to the customer and you keep the difference from the sale as your profit. It's like traditional drop shipping, but when you use Printify, it removes all of the risk. And using AI makes it easier than any other type of drop shipping that I found. That's why new shops are able to open and start making sales faster than ever before. And you can see this happening in real time. Take a look at this shop that's selling printon-demand products on Etsy, for

6:53 example. It's pretty new. It's only 8 months old. And in that time, they've made over $3,000 sales and are currently making an estimated $27,000 per month selling basic print on demand t-shirts and sweatshirts like these products you see here. Most of their products just have some kind of stylized text or graphic that lets them target specific niches and ideas. They just come up with an idea like this floral golden retriever outline design. They can use AI to generate that design, upload it to the product, and post it for sale. And that's how they're able to make so much money doing this. AI is the reason why beginners are able to open new shops like these ones and scale them up so quickly. And it's the reason why shops like this one, after only a year selling on Etsy, is able to make around $48,000

7:38 a month. Once again, selling these simple print on-demand products. But Etsy isn't the only place that these products sell. They also sell on other marketplaces like Amazon and Tik Tok Shop. Tik Tok shop is absolutely blowing up in popularity. And it shows because listings like this one, even with super simple designs that AI would have no problem making, are still able to sell over 9,900 times. And that's after they charge $17 for the product and $4 for shipping. When we add these up, that means that they're making over $2160 per sale. And if we multiply that by the amount of sales they've gotten, that means that this design has generated the shop owner over $200,000. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we can sell the exact same product using a supplier like Printify. So, if we sold the same

8:25 Comfort Colors t-shirt between the product and shipping costs, it comes out to $14.71. So, if this shop owner is selling their products through Printify, that means they're keeping $7.34 of profit per sale. That means that one single design like this one has likely made over $70,000 of profit. And there's a lot of print on demand t-shirts that sell just as well, like this one that's sold around 5,000 times. And I'll show you how we can use AI to make this type of design. But take a look at the shop that's selling this product. They've sold over $73,000 printon-demand t-shirts from their shop. Even if they make a more conservative $5 of profit per sale, they've still made over $216,000 selling on Tik Tok shop, which is a completely free platform to sell on, by

9:12 the way. Now, there's a lot of different strategies that you can use to sell print-on- demand products on marketplaces like Etsy and Tik Tok shop. But the main things that you need to understand, first you have researching the niche, which is just about finding a niche in which products are selling super well. Second is you actually have to make the design or use AI to come up with a design targeting that niche. And third, you have to market it. You have to get your product in front of those customers who actually want to buy it. Most people get hung up on that first step, which is researching and finding a niche to sell in. But luckily for you, I've got a full completely free 10-hour print on demand course which covers my exact strategy for how I've done this over the last 6 years and it's completely free for you to watch here on YouTube. There's no gatekeeping. There's no extra secrets that I left out.

9:58 Absolutely everything that you could possibly need are right there in that video. And when you consider that making these t-shirt designs is literally as simple as uploading a reference to Nano Banana and asking it for an iteration on something that's already working, creating designs is easier than it's ever been before. Plus, when you do this one, you're not leaving as much up to chance like you are when you start a social media business, for example. You have a lot more control when you run an actual business like print on demand. You can control the amount of marketing you can do. You can control the amount of products that you make and post for sale. But your startup costs with this business will be slightly higher as well because between the research and the AI tools that you'll need to run the business and make designs, you'll likely be spending between $50 to $100 a month to run this business. It easily pays

10:44 itself off, but you should at least be aware of it. At the same time though, a business like this has a much higher income potential. We just looked at some of the new shops that are already scaling to $40,000 a month in around a year. So yeah, that means that on the low end, between a 20 and 30% profit margin, they're easily bringing in 10 to $12,000 of profit per month. And their shops genuinely aren't even that old. This is one of my favorite businesses for a reason. Not only can you start and scale this business without having to learn how to run paid ads, but you can also launch your products on multiple sales channels like Etsy and Tik Tok Shop and Shopify. That means with the same amount of work, you can double or triple the amount of income you're making without really having to do anything else. And this is one of the most reliable, predictable businesses.

11:31 Once you build up a catalog of print on demand designs, like the shops that we looked at, they'll continue to sell over time and make you more money as you grow that catalog. And since Printify handles all of the printing and shipping of the products, the only thing that you have to worry about is creating that initial product upfront, and it'll continue selling while you're sleeping. But that brings us to the next idea on the list, which is selling AI generated digital downloads. Last year alone, I made a little bit over $600,000 just selling digital products. But imagine for a second that you could use AI to generate simple paintings like this one that earn you thousands of dollars per month. This shop has hundreds of these paintings posted for sale, and they're making an estimated $13,000 per month. The cool thing about selling a digital product is it doesn't require any inventory or

12:17 product fulfillment. That means every single sale is nearly entirely profit. So for a digital product shop like this one, they're likely keeping around 90 to 95% in profit. And over the last 2 and 1/2 years, you can see that they've made a little over $800,000 in total revenue. So how does this even work? Shops like this one that opened only 4 months ago simply start by picking a theme or a niche for their shop. Then what they do is once they have an idea of the type of artwork that they want to make, they'll simply start by using a tool like Nano Banana to create an AI art that matches the theme they're going for. This shop that's selling these whimsical style paintings has sold almost $2,000 of them over the last 4 months and is making approximately $22,000 a month. And just to show you how easy it is to actually

13:04 make this type of artwork, if you sign up for a tool like Nano Banana, you can ask an AI model to reverse engineer a piece of artwork that's already selling really well into a Jason prompt. And then you can use that prompt to go and generate a similar artwork that's going to look and feel just as premium as the other art that's already selling. Writing the prompt is definitely the hardest part. But if you're curious about how to do this and sell AI art specifically in more detail, let me know in the comments section and maybe I'll make a full video detailing exactly how I do it in an even longer, more detailed session. Pretty quickly though, you can generate a lot of this type of AI art since the AI is doing all of the heavy lifting for you. The thing is that a digital product business is a little bit harder than something like print on demand because you have to be even

13:50 better at writing prompts. You have to be a little technical to work with the images so that customers can actually print them out and hang them on their wall if that's what they want. There's more competition in the digital product space. And unless you're making these bigger bundles of artwork that sell for a lot more, then each individual artwork that you make might only make you a few dollars. Meaning that unless you have these bundles, you're going to need to make a lot more sales to make the same amount of money. That said, the shops that we looked at are proof that with the right strategy and with good market research, you can break into the market and scale a shop that can make you tens of thousands of dollars in profit in not too much time. Like this shop, when you're on Etsy, estimated $300,000 in revenue. The real key to success here is not stopping after you've only posted 50 listings for sale. These shops post

14:36 hundreds and sometimes even thousands of listings for sale in their shop. Your income potential here is going to be anywhere from a few thousand all the way up to 20 or even $30,000 a month like the brand new shops that we saw that are already doing this. On a passiveness scale, this one is the most passive. AI is making the art for you. It's a digital product. There's no fulfillment. There's no customer service. Hardly anything goes into actually running one of these shops besides making the artwork and growing your catalog. If you want to see my full organic marketing strategy for how I grow shops just like these without running paid ads, I'll leave a link to that right below the subscribe button or you can watch it completely for free. I show you exactly how I grow shops just like this without running paid ads. But that brings us to the next best AI beginner business that

15:22 you can start, which is a book publishing business. Now, this sounds a lot more intimidating than it actually is, but Amazon has a program called Amazon KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing. This allows sellers like you and me to create digital books and post them for sale on websites like Amazon for Amazon to promote and market to their customer base. So, the way this works is you create some kind of book using AI, post it for sale on Amazon, and let them do the marketing to try and sell that book to their customers. Simple books like these sell on Amazon all the time. This is definitely simple enough where you could have an AI model like Claude or Grock outline one of these simple stories and you can see these few definitely AI looking books on Amazon have a few hundred reviews each which

16:07 means that they've made a lot of sales because not every customer is going to leave a review and of course these published books sell on other marketplaces like Etsy as well. This one for example is a custom story book. So the customer is going to send in an image of their child. I assume they could do themselves if they wanted. But a custom book like this that you could still make using a tool like Nano Banana is selling every day. And this one has made an estimated $8,000 just this month. The way that you go about doing this is use one AI to come out with a storybook outline. And then you take that outline and you plug it into a tool like Nano Banana to make a bunch of images for it. And then you just need to stitch them together in a tool like Amazon KDP. or if you want to sell them on a different marketplace like Etsy, you could use a tool like Printify or

16:52 you could offer it as a digital download as well. This one, just like all the others, is super easy to do since it's automated using AI. The difference here is that your startup costs are almost completely gone. The only real expense is any AI image generators that you'll need to make designs for the book. This is one of the lowest barrier to entry businesses since it's basically completely free to start. But because it doesn't cost anything, that also means that your income is a little more limited. You'll likely cap out at between $1 to $4,000 per month. And at that point, you definitely need to expand into selling different types of products or opening multiple publishing shops. And because it's such a low barrier to entry business, there's a lot more competition than some of the other ideas we looked at. But if you do decide to sell something like a custom book, you can make more profit per sale, but

17:38 it's also less passive. So, it kind of depends how you wanted to sell those books using the AI, but that'd be completely up to you and depend on how you want to go about it. Yeah, those are my four favorite AI beginner businesses that you could start this year that will make you money probably faster than any other options that you have available. I've got a ton of free resources right below the subscribe button, so be sure to check those out. And yeah, as always,