This content outlines five beginner-friendly, AI-powered business ideas for 2025, emphasizing how AI can automate much of the work, allowing individuals to generate significant income with moderate effort and low initial costs.
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What's the laziest way to make money
with AI in 2025 as a beginner? As
someone who's made millions with AI
products in my company, Martell
Ventures, I'm going to share with you
the five ways I would make money with AI
if I was starting from zero. I'll even
teach you how to find and sell it to
customers and show you the cost, effort,
and potential for each one. Now, I'm not
talking about a get-richqu scheme. These
are real money-making ideas where AI
does most of the work for you. So, let's
get into it. Starting with number five,
AI thumbnail design. You can get paid to
design those thumbnails that you see on
YouTube that you have to click to watch
the video. It's designing high
converting YouTube thumbnails using AI
products like Midjourney, Photoshop, and
Canva AI. Here's the problem. Most
people think that it's just like vibe
designing where you just like I'm really
good at prompts and I just touch and it
creates images. That's not what I'm
talking about. The cool part is is the
cost is low to get into it. The effort
is medium. It's not that hard and the
potential is actually pretty high right
now with the rise of personal brands. On
the low end, you can make 50 bucks a day
doing like five thumbnails for 10 bucks.
But on the high end, and this is what we
invest in, is 200 to 400 a day where
we're paying for 4 to eight highquality
thumbnails at 50 bucks each. And you
might think to yourself, who would pay
for this? And I'll be honest with you, I
didn't even know this was a thing. I was
visiting my buddy Sean at space station.
I remember walking down the hallway and
he introduces me to a guy that's in a
room and he says, "That's our thumbnail
designer." He had two monitors testing
different things and iterations and he
worked on five different channels and it
made me realize that the pros that
actually make money with YouTube will
pay for this and that's why you got to
get good at it. So, this is how you
learn thumbnail design to get paid the
big bucks. Number one, you have to
analyze dozens of viral thumbnails in
your niche. There's tools like one of 10
and view stats that will help you find
those different sites and study exactly
what they're doing today because it will
change to stand out on YouTube. Number
two is create a portfolio of thumbnails.
Literally collect your favorite
thumbnails to build a body of work that
you can use as reference material when
you're designing your own. Number three
is model best performers. This might
make a lot of sense, but the truth is is
using chat GPT, you can upload the
portfolio of thumbnails that you found
and then use that as the base foundation
to design new and better ones. Now,
you're probably thinking to yourself,
"Well, this sounds great, but how do I
find customers?" Let me teach you my
audit to deal process. It's how all my
agency friends sell what they do easily.
Number one is to pick a niche. I don't
care if it's automotive, personal
development, doctors, running, the
riches are in the niches. So, pick an
industry that you personally love, that
you would love to create thumbnails for.
Number two is scrape the leads. Build a
targeted list of potential buyers. And
I'm talking go on LinkedIn, go do your
research, and just build a massive
spreadsheet. I call this mapping the
universe for your market. Number three,
run an audit. So, if you're doing AI
thumbnails, go to their YouTube channel,
run through the whole video catalog,
give them suggestions on how you make it
better. Record yourself doing a quick
Loom video, 60 seconds or less. And then
if you can add some examples of what you
would do if you worked with them, add
value to their life before you ever ask
them for a dollar. Number four is offer
service. So this is a quick fast action
bonus. Some kind of guarantee to reduce
the risk to get your foot in the door.
Something very simple, not expensive.
They can make a decision. They might get
the email from you with the video and
reply and say, "Sounds like a deal. Take
the payment." Trust me. Get on the call.
after they've paid. Now, once you do
some great work, you can offer them
stuff that might keep you around longer.
Which brings us to number four, AI blog
generation. Essentially, you create
content that's highly specific for your
customer that gets them awareness in
their market. So, top of funnel,
midfunnel, and bottom of the funnel.
Every piece of content serves a
different purpose, and that's what makes
it different. Even going as far, and
this is where you get paid the big
bucks, I'll share in a second, is to
make it work for AI. So now with the
search being the new chat prompt,
companies want to rank inside the AI
language model so that their business is
recommended when people ask questions of
the universe for how they should solve
their problems. The cost to get started
is very low. There's no tools involved.
You just start using the free tools. The
effort is low. You literally just start
asking the AI what you should do to work
with these customers. It'll tell you.
The potential is medium. And the reason
why is because blogs long-term with AI
getting so good at this, it just may not
be as relevant as it is today. Because
you could create five really good blogs
per day at about 10 bucks a piece for
some of these larger SEO farms out
there. On the high end, you could be
making 200 to 500 a day because if you
get good on this on the high end, you
can get paid to help people rank in some
of these new AI language models or get
paid through affiliate revenue by
creating content with links to products
you get paid when people buy. One of my
clients, Timmer, is actually using AI to
create SEO blog posts from podcast
episodes for clients. And he makes over
100,000 a month doing this. This is why
I think AI can support but not replace
the human process because the most
powerful stories still come from the
human experience. AI just helps us tell
them better. So, this is how you get
started. Number one, model, then modify.
And what you want to do is you want to
find the top 10 blogs in every niche
using tools like SEM Rush or Uber
Suggest so that you can see where their
outliers sit to find the patterns.
Number two is to actually use Chad GPT
or some other AI to create a portfolio
of writing samples using the best blogs
as inspiration. Don't copy, but use it
to train exactly what you want the
outputs to look like so it's going to
work for you. Number three is you got to
rank in search. So that's why there's
these tools like rank.ai AI to help your
blog post rank not only in Google but
also in the large language models like
Chad GPT. And I know this sounds really
simple. The challenge you're thinking
is, well, where do I find the customer
going to pay me the money to do their
SEO? Run the audit to deal process. It's
the same thing. It's so simple, so
powerful that if you just do a little
bit of work up front, show the buyer
that you know what you're doing, and
make it really easy for them to buy from
you, they will. Which brings us to
number three, the faceless YouTube
channel. This one's wild because I was
like, I don't think AI can really
replace somebody like me. It turns out
that I've been consuming AI generated
YouTube content for years. I didn't even
know. There are those YouTube channels
that you've seen where there's a person
talking and there's a bunch of B-roll
explaining the concept, but there's
nobody on screen and they get hundreds
of thousands of views. If you understood
the CPMs, those people are making 50,
60, $70,000 a month off of YouTube ads.
Now, the cost to start on that one is
medium because there's more tools to get
started. You need some of the editing
software. The effort is medium because
there's some skills you got to develop
storytelling in the narrative arc and
how to create good hooks and clips and
packaging. And the potential is high
because what I love about it is it
allows you to build and keep stacking
income because the more it grows, the
more you'll make. So on the low end,
yes, small channels might only make $10
to $50 a day, and there's a lot of
effort up front to build to that first
10,000 subs, but on the high end, you
could be making $500 a day or more.
Monetize not only through the YouTube ad
network, but also affiliate links.
Here's how we get started. Number one,
pick a niche. I'm thinking categories
that I know I can sell either
affiliates, brand deals, or get paid top
CPMs, cost per thousand based on what
people are paying today for other
YouTube videos with that kind of
content. The second is create your
scripts. And again, this is where we
want to use tools like Chad GPT to
outline them and to really find our
narrative style. See, what you want to
figure out is what's your signature
video type? And it all comes from the
script. It's the language you use. It's
the cadence. It's the way you open up.
How do you explore it? Try to find a
unique voice for you to create your
faceless YouTube videos. Number three,
build your avatar. And again, it could
be faceless where there's no person, or
you can use synthesia or 11 Labs to
generate a virtual AI avatar of you
talking so that it reads the scripts,
but you're never on camera. Number four
is post and iterate. See, most people
talk about 10,000 hours and you get
really good at something. It's not
10,000 repetition, it's 10,000
iterations. Meaning, every time you post
a new video, try to make it 1% better.
Which brings us to number two, AI
website building. When a business
starts, they need a website. And there's
22 million small businesses in North
America. And in the past, they're used
to paying 5, 10, $25,000 for a website
that you can use AI to build it. There's
literally these new no code building
tools. And you use AI to generate not
only the imagery, the copy, but the
whole code structure. And you can still
charge a lot of money if you're good at
what you're doing. And you can use these
tools that we're going to talk about
later to have businesses pay you top
dollar because they understand a website
is that important. The cool part is the
cost is low because there's not a lot of
software you got to pay for or people
you got to hire. The effort is medium
because there's some technical skills
you may need to learn like hosting. And
then the potential though is massively
high because if you perfect that one
offer, you can scale it because think
about every new business that needs a
website every day. On the low end, you
might only make a hundred bucks a day,
and that might be like generating one
new website a day, but honestly, that's
for very small businesses. On the high
end, you could be making $500 to $1,000
a day because you have multiple clients
and you're upselling them. Check this
out, AI SEO, and hosting and AI
automations because you have the
relationship with the customer. And it's
kind of scary how many of these design
agencies are going to lose all their
work to some 17-year-old kid doing it
with AI. The most valuable real estate
in 2025 isn't on Earth. It's on the
internet and it's going to be built with
AI. So, here's how we get started.
Number one, you got to pick a no code
builder and get really good at it. I
like frame AI, Bolt or Reloom for people
just getting started. Number two is you
want to generate the custom copy with
chat GPT and then visualize the copy
with midjourney. And the last one is
build two to three example websites to
show buyers your skill. like actually
build stuff maybe for your parents or
for yourself that you think is a cool
idea that demonstrates the quality of
your work. Now, I know you're probably
asking yourself like, "How do I sell
this thing?" Run the audit to deal
process. Which brings us in number one,
AI automation agency, which is like the
hotness. Now, the cost is medium because
maybe for some projects you're going to
need some software and pay for pro
versions of it. And the effort is medium
because there's a learning curve if
you're new to this. But the cool part is
is I taught it to my 12-year-old son.
Like anybody can learn this if they're
willing to just put their head down,
search and consume that information
instead of drowning themselves in
personal development podcast. Like it's
time to go learn. And the potential is
high because you will be at the
forefront of artificial intelligence.
You'll be helping businesses reduce the
complexity in their business and you
will find new opportunities cuz you're
sitting in those companies. On the low
end, you could be making 200 bucks a
day. That only takes one or two small
clients that you automate their
workflows every week. You just work on
it. On the high end though, you could be
making a,000 to 2500 a day because
that's where you're integrating their
current tool sets with other software
integrations. You're helping them with
lead generation. You're figuring out how
to improve the back-end workflow so they
can increase their capacity to work with
more customers. So, the problem you're
solving is for bigger customers that
have more money, which means they'll pay
you because the problems you solve makes
them more money. Here's my rule. Every
person on my team has to understand how
to do this anyway. Even my head of
finance sat down for 3 weeks and built a
complete endto-end process to automate
all the bookkeeping. This person loves
spreadsheets, didn't know anything about
AI. Automation isn't about replacing
people. It's about freeing them to focus
on what matters most, about being
creative, focusing on results. Really
figuring out what part's going to move
the needle. And anything that's just
processing information or moving things
forward can be done by a computer. So,
here's how we get started. Number one,
create a course of action. Just ask Chad
GPT, if I wanted to start an automation
agency, what are the top 10 steps I
should do? Be detailed, be very concise,
and it will tell you. Number two is
master one automation use case. See,
most people that get into this start
thinking about like all the freaking
things they could do with AI. And you
could, but then you're not really going
deep on anything. I'm talking about like
cold outreach, team training, building
bots, onboarding, automation, like pick
one specific area and go deep because
specialists get paid. The third, join a
community. You want to be around other
people doing the thing so you can learn
faster. I like Dave Eelar if you're more
technical and you want to build like aic
systems. If you want to learn like
content and automation, go follow
Stephen Pope and join their communities.
Now, I understand this one's a little
harder to run the audit to deal process
because we're talking about internal
workflows. But what you do instead is
you just reach out to customers and say,
"Hey, I'm new. I'm looking to build some
case studies. I will go fix this problem
for you for free. It costs you nothing.
All I ask is that if I overd deliver on
what I promised that you allow me to use
this project as a case study so I can
share with other customers going
forward." That's the win-win. They get
free problem solved. You get a case
study, you do five to 10 of those. Trust
me, they'll want to keep you around if
you're good, and they'll refer you to
people they know. Now, if you're
actually building real AI technology,
like real products, real software, not
just doing this automation stuff, and
you want to see if I might be interested
in partnering with you, then just find
me on Instagram and send me the word
venture, and we'll have a chat to see if
what you're working on makes sense. But
if you want to learn how I go from zero
to a million this year, click here and
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