12 Ways to Make Money with Claude
For people who want to seriously make money with Claude AI, ranked from your fastest first dollar to the most scalable income. Zero technical background required.
In case you missed it:
REMINDER: I will never ask you for money. Never pay for “courses”, trading platforms, or investment opportunities. Those are all fake.
The Most Important Scientific Revolution Has Already Started
TLDR… here are 12 ways to make money with Claude in 2026, ranked from your fastest first dollar to the most scalable income: 1:1 coaching, corporate training, paid courses, AI strategy consulting, brand sponsorships, a paid community, paid speaking, then 4 agency models (social media, AEO, vibe code, AI automation), and finally vibe coding your own SaaS product.
The job market is slightly better, but still TERRIBLE.
An income you control is the only safety net left.
So I mapped 12 ways to make money with Claude, ranked from the fastest first dollar to the most scalable income, all on ONE chart.
I built an AI company and sold it for millions.
Now I’m approaching 3 million followers and teach millions of people how to use AI - for free.
If you’re thinking, “I’m not technical enough to make money with AI”… trust me, you don’t need to be.”
You need to understand the tradeoffs.
The pros and cons of each path.
I know that many of you reading this feel OVERWHELMED with INFORMATION OVERLOAD. So this is my best attempt to explain different ways to make money with AI… so you can make the right choice for yourself.
None of these are “easy passive income”… expect months and years of hard work.
But I gatekeep nothing!
This is the only playbook you need.
Full livestream here:
Who this is for:
People who want to seriously monetize AI in 2026.
NOT play with prompts.
But confused where to start, drowning in information.
Who this is NOT for: people who already run a profitable AI business and know exactly which lever to pull next.
First, the ONE chart that decides everything
Before the list, you need the map.
Every path lives somewhere on 2 axes.
Leverage (vertical): does this scale WITHOUT your time? High leverage means I could sell the same course to 1,000 more people and do zero extra work. Low leverage means you’re selling your 24 hours for dollars.
Time to First Dollar (horizontal): how fast does money hit your account? Services and consulting pay FAST. Building a brand or a product pays slow, but scales way bigger.
Fast money lives bottom-left (trade your time).
Scalable money lives top-right (build an asset).
So when you feel stuck thinking “why is this taking so long to make money?”… it’s because you picked a path on the slow right side without knowing it.
Fast money = trading your time.
Scalable money = building assets.
Agencies sit in the middle. Cold-outreach cash AND a process you can productize.
CAVEAT: the examples below walk through ONE example target buyer. Because I want to illustrate each income path with a clear example. But there are many possible target buyers or offer variations you can pursue.
1. 1:1 Coaching For Busy Professionals
This is the fastest cash of all 12. Lowest leverage too.
I could open any of my inboxes right now and find people who want to pay me for coaching.
Buyer: Busy professionals. Tech, middle management, anyone employed full-time who can easily afford a couple hundred dollars and wants to become “AI native” for a promotion.
Outcome: Build them 5 reusable skills in Claude that save 10 hours per week. A “skill” is just a saved set of instructions Claude runs on command, like a mini app you build in plain English. For total beginners, start simpler: set up their Claude with their bio and automate 1 weekly task like email triage.
Distribution: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. IG and FB are easiest because you set up DM automation and those audiences are used to spending money. I treat Instagram as the new LinkedIn of 2026.
The catch: It’s your time. You have 24 hours a day like everyone else, and you’re trading them for dollars.
Coaching is the fastest way to your first dollar.
It’s also the hardest one to scale, because the product is YOU.
2. Corporate Training For Small-to-Mid Enterprise
Same idea as coaching, but you train a whole TEAM at once. That’s where the leverage kicks up.
Buyer: Small-to-medium businesses. They have employees, which means they have money.
Outcome: Train the team to save 15+ hours per week with tailored Claude skills. Train 10 people, save each 5 hours, and you just handed the company back 50 hours a week.
Distribution: LinkedIn (where companies hang out), or go LOCAL. The SBA, local Facebook groups, chambers of commerce, Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Go hyper local and you’ll have ZERO competition. I live near Salt Lake City. Nobody here cares about AI. The good news? Zero competition.
Why it sells: AI is being shoved down every company’s throat. Small businesses are panicking about falling behind. My take: don’t lay people off, upskill them. They already have the domain expertise.
Your curriculum stays about 70% the same across clients, 30% tailored. That reusable 70% is why this beats coaching on leverage.
3. Paid Courses
Now we jump to high leverage.
Sell the same course to 1,000 people, do no extra work.
Here’s an EXAMPLE topic for the course, including how I’d position the offer. But your course can be anything related to learning AI:
Buyer: Content creators trying to figure out how to use AI (one example, this works for any niche).
Outcome: Help them grow automatically on 2 more platforms and save 10 hours per week. Take the tedious stuff off their plate: research, hooks, scripts, clipping long videos into shorts.
Distribution: Youtube, Instagram, Facebook. IG and FB give you comment-to-DM automations (“comment CLAUDE and I’ll send you the link”). YouTube is the gold standard for education… everyone says “I’ll go to YouTube to learn this.”
The #1 way people fail: They spend 99% of their time perfecting the course and 1% on marketing. Then they launch and nobody buys. I see this same mistake over and over.
Honest confession: I’m not a great content creator. I build content SYSTEMS that make a lot of content, and a small percent of it is good.
The course is the easy part.
The marketing is the whole game. Flip that ratio.
4. AI Strategy Consulting
This is strategy only.
You don’t build anything. You find the money.
Similar to 3, you can target many types of businesses with this model. Here, I am talking through ONE example of a target buyer.
Buyer: Local businesses (works for any business, really).
Outcome: Go into the business, understand everything, and identify 3 to 5 places AI can make more revenue or save hours per week. For a multi-team operation, finding 100 hours a week of waste is not far-fetched.
Distribution: Local Facebook groups, chambers of commerce, the SBA. Become known as THE AI person in your town and referrals flow. Even better, run local Facebook ads to a free AI workshop, host it, and collect referrals.
The universal frame: Business owners care about 2 things. Making more money and saving time. The closer your offer sits to those, the more you charge.
The 2 leaks almost every business has: inbound leads that never get a callback, and customer support that never replies. Start there.
Business owners want the outcome.
They don’t care if you use AI, an alien, or voodoo.
5. Brand Sponsorships For AI Companies
Get paid to film a video. That’s the whole job.
Buyer: AI and SaaS companies, especially recently funded ones with budgets set aside for influencers. Real example: a startup that just launched an MCP server (a connector that plugs their tool into Claude) and wants tutorials showing it off.
Outcome: Film a video demoing their product. That’s it.
Distribution: Build on YouTube. Brands reach out, or you cold email: “I’m a YouTuber, here’s my follower count and average views, I love your app, I’d love to feature it.” Then send a rate card with 3 options.
The money: Sub 10K-subscriber on Youtube charges a few thousand dollars per video. Bigger channels charge $5,000 to $10,000+. And 99% of the time payment is NOT tied to performance. You get paid even if the video flops… which is most of the time. Terrible for sponsors like me, but that’s the current market.
New YouTubers are blowing up right now simply by talking about Claude. The search volume is enormous. Copy a viral topic and thumbnail, add your spin, and you’ll hit 10K subscribers fast. When I say “long,” I mean 3 months, not 3 years.
Claude raised billions at nearly a trillion-dollar valuation.
Startups are throwing money at any AI creator who can hold a camera.
Even if your camera’s blurry af like mine… you can get paid:
6. Paid Community
The math on this one is so good it’s hard to ignore: paid communities to learn AI.
Here’s an EXAMPLE target buyer:
Buyer: People who’ve heard of Claude and want to go deeper. Segment them by demographic, tools, or skill level. My example: women who want to learn AI.
Outcome: Weekly new skills, weekly trainings, Q&A, accountability, and peers at the same level.
Distribution: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, plus Substack. You can even build a profitable community right inside Substack… the playbook is to start free and gatekeep your best stuff. Skip paid ads unless you know what you’re doing, or you’ll burn thousands fast.
The math: $50/month X 200 members is $10,000/month. RECURRING. There are 1,000+ people watching this livestream. You’re telling me you can’t find 200 who want to learn Claude?
Honest caveat: recurring revenue means recurring work. People expect fresh content or they churn. And with no audience, nobody joins an empty room.
I run a free community and it will NEVER be paid.
BUT the math on paid is so good, it’s an amazing way to start.
7. Paid Speaking For Non-Technical Companies
Lower leverage (it has to be YOU on stage), but you get some credibility.
Buyer: Non-technical companies and organizations that gather lots of businesses, so you teach many members at once.
Outcome: Anywhere from a hands-on Claude workshop (“let’s set up 3 skills today”) to a high-level “what is AI and why it matters” keynote.
Distribution: LinkedIn plus any social presence. Grow a brand and you’ll get inbound DMs asking you to speak.
The money: Pay ranges from a couple thousand to well above $20,000. And people who know nothing about you suddenly trust you because “wow, you spoke at that event.”
The honest downside: it’s slow to break in. Organizers want a shiny resume, and when a slot opens they pick from several candidates. Prep is heavy too. You’re in front of hundreds of people, so you can’t have random bugs in your slides.
Coaching: if Claude goes down, you reschedule.
Speaking: you’re live in front of 100s of people…
8. Social Media Agency For Online Businesses
The next 4 are all agency models you turbocharge with AI. Proven, profitable businesses you can now scale without a giant team.
First up, the social media agency. Every business needs help here. Hint: every single one.
Buyer: Online business owners running a coaching program or paid community whose social presence is weak.
Outcome: Turn 1 business idea into 30 days of posts using Claude. One monthly meeting, AI records the call, turns notes into 30 posts, and hooks into Canva for carousels.
Distribution: Instagram DMs (genuinely reach out to owners whose IG is struggling), cold email (works great once you have case studies, lead with results), and local businesses.
Medium leverage, fast cash: It’s a repeatable process you install in any business, and every business on earth needs marketing.
The honest catch: clients need babysitting. Onboarding, expectations, recurring tweaks. That’s what makes $100K/month harder than it looks.
Saying social media agencies are dead is just false.
Every business needs help with their content. Every single one.
9. AEO Agency For SaaS And Local Businesses
AEO is Answer Engine Optimization. Getting businesses to show up in Google AND AI search results. I’m literally a buyer here… I recently hired an AEO agency for Blotato.
Buyer: SaaS businesses and local businesses. Two valid buyers.
Outcome: Show up in the top 5 Google and AI search results. For SaaS, rank for specific keywords. For local, show up when someone searches “plumbers in Salt Lake City.” Google is still king for local.
Distribution: LinkedIn shines. It’s easy to make a LinkedIn post go viral by claiming you have the AEO secrets. Cold email and content work too.
The money: Agencies charge thousands per month for this. If it delivers $10,000 in ROI, why wouldn’t a business pay $9,000 for it? The math works.
Honest caveat: it’s harder than the social media agency. Non-technical people get lost by step 2, and results take longer to show. My spicy take: a lot of “AEO” is just SEO with a fresh name, and that’s fine. It’s still important.
Build a base set of Claude SEO skills.
Fine-tune a version per client, plug into WordPress or Webflow, repeat.
10. Vibe Code Agency For Non-Technical Founders
There’s an army of non-technical founders stuck at the last mile. They have an 80% app and can’t finish it.
Buyer: Non-technical founders who built an MVP with AI but can’t handle auth, payments, security, or deployment. Also companies that want a fast, reliable MVP to test an idea.
Outcome: Finish, fix, and launch their half-built app. You’re selling speed, reliability, and security. Speed matters most, because most startups die before they ship.
Distribution: Join AI and Skool communities, find people stuck, and be GENUINELY helpful. Write the best 3-paragraph answer to their question and they’ll DM you “can I pay you to finish this?” This happens constantly.
Higher leverage: It doesn’t have to be only you. Your team can handle fulfillment.
The honest truth: if you have zero technical background, this one is HARD. You need to learn deployment, databases, and Stripe first, and that takes real time. You’ll probably freak out every time you see an error message.
A founder who sweated 8 hours to get to 80% is desperate.
They just want someone to take it and finish it.
11. AI Automation Agency For Service Businesses
Easiest agency to land a first client. Also my lowest-leverage technical model. Both are true.
Let’s walk through the AI Automation Agency for one sample target buyer:
Buyer: Service businesses. Established, with revenue and existing processes for sales, support, and hiring, so there’s a lot to improve.
Outcome: Audit what they do today, then automate intake, follow-ups, reporting, and admin work to save time and make money.
Distribution: Upwork is underrated. I posted a test job there and rising to the top was not hard, because most applicants don’t even read the post.
Why it’s easy to start: Owners on Upwork decide fast. “We have this need, you seem credible, you’re hired.”
The honest reality: every business is messy. Tools don’t talk to each other, data is trapped in silos, and owners aren’t systems people. I’ve never seen 1 person run a $100K/month automation agency without a team. You’re expected to perform miracles.
Automation adds huge leverage to YOUR work.
But as an AGENCY business model, it’s surprisingly low leverage. Know that going in.
Phrased differently: you couldn’t pay me to start an AI Automation Agency today, because I have other better options.
12. Vibe Code Your Own Product
This is the one I actually do. The ONLY one I do.
Highest leverage, but longest road to your first dollar.
Buyer: Whoever your product serves. Mine is Blotato, built for content creators.
Outcome: A recurring-subscription SaaS. Blotato’s promise: create 1 week of content in 10 minutes. Your north star question: what’s the ONE thing a user should walk away with in their first 90 seconds?
Distribution: TikTok shines. It’s the most generous with views and the highest chance of going viral. When a product goes viral on TikTok, you could bring in a million dollars overnight. Youtube tutorials are also great, FB/IG also great because of DM automations.
The highest leverage there is: Adding another Blotato user takes zero extra work from me. No onboarding, no sales call, nothing. And if your SaaS product is at $1M/year in revenue, a buyer paying $5M to $20M for the company is reasonable.
But be honest with yourself. This is the HARDEST path and the longest to your first dollar. The brutal part of SaaS is getting to your first $10,000 in recurring monthly revenue. I don’t recommend this if you need money right now. Every other path is faster.
This is the path I do.
It’s the hardest, the slowest to pay, and the one almost nobody will stick with.
But I’ve done it before. I’m introverted and love not having sales calls, consulting clients, or a big team.
RECAP
Here’s the crazy part I saved for the end…
During my livestream, I ran live polls:
“Type 1 if you want my community, 2 for my course, 3 for coaching with me.” Hundreds of you responded.
Then I told you… I don’t do ANY of paths 1 through 11.
I just proved the demand is real, even for the things I’d never sell. So if YOU offer these, the demand is sitting right there.
Quick map of where everything lands:
1/ Fastest cash: 1:1 coaching. People make impulsive decisions, money hits fast. Low leverage.
2/ Best-of-both: the 4 agency models. Cold-outreach cash plus a process you can productize.
3/ Highest leverage, slowest road: courses, a paid community, and your own product. Build the asset, get paid for years.
4/ The one I do: vibe coding my own product. Few of you will stick with it, and that’s exactly why it’s worth so much.
Can you do multiple? Yes, and I encourage a little experimentation at the start. But experimenting means 6 months each, not a half-hearted part-time 2 weeks. Eventually, pick ONE. It’s hard to scale past $100K/month when you’re split across 5 things.
And if you have NO IDEA where to start, I always say posting content is the safest bet because it preserves ALL your options.
And don’t agonize over today’s choice. You can always change.
The whole point is to acquire skills and build optionality.
Pick the path you genuinely enjoy.
Because if you enjoy it, you stay consistent, and consistency is how you build something real.
Remember, think in YEARS-long timelines.
Full livestream here:
FAQ
Do I need to be technical to make money with Claude? No. Paths 1 through 9 are about helping people USE AI, not building software. Only the vibe code agency and your own product lean technical, and you can start non-technical and partner with a builder.
What’s the fastest way to my first dollar? 1:1 coaching. You can find a paying client in your existing network or DMs this week. The tradeoff is low leverage, since you’re trading your time for money.
Is a paid community worth it with only a few hundred members? Yes. 200 members at $50/month is $10,000/month recurring. You only need 200 people out of millions of AI learners, but expect ongoing work to keep them from churning.
Which path is the hardest? Vibe coding your own SaaS product. It’s the highest leverage but the longest road to your first dollar, and the hardest part is getting to your first $1,000 in recurring payments.
Should I run several income streams at once? Not at the start. Experiment with a few for 3 to 6 months each, then commit to ONE. Spreading across too many is why most people stall before $100K/month.
P.S. Need More Help? 👋
1/ Free AI courses
2/ Free AI prompts
3/ Free AI automations
4/ Free AI vibe coding
5/ Ask me anything @ Friday livestream
6/ Free private community for Women Building AI
7/ I built Blotato to grow 1M+ followers in 1 year
thank you so much I'm a full stack software developer but I found this helpful 💕
Thank you sooooooooooo much