Dan Martell - June 17, 2025


Laziest Way to Make Money with AI (Starting From Zero)

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Dave Ebelar Steven Pipe Chad GPT Reloom Bolt
Have Mentors Advisors And Peers Doing A Business Deal In A Ferrari

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

212.63

Word count

2,911

Sentence count

135

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

As someone who s made millions with AI products in my company Martell Ventures, I m going to share with you the 5 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.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 What's the laziest way to make money with AI in 2025 as a beginner?
00:00:04.660 As someone who's made millions with AI products in my company Martell Ventures,
00:00:08.740 I'm going to share with you the five ways I would make money with AI if I was starting from zero.
00:00:14.160 I'll even teach you how to find and sell it to customers and show you the cost,
00:00:18.400 effort, and potential for each one. Now, I'm not talking about a get-rich-quick scheme.
00:00:23.100 These are real money-making ideas where AI does most of the work for you. So let's get into it.
00:00:27.360 starting with number five ai thumbnail design you can get paid to design those thumbnails that you
00:00:34.240 see on youtube that you have to click to watch the video it's designing high converting youtube
00:00:39.520 thumbnails using ai products like mid-journey photoshop and canva ai here's the problem most
00:00:44.960 people think that it's just like vibe designing where you're just like i'm really good at prompts
00:00:48.640 and i just chat chat and it creates images that's not what i'm talking about the cool part is is the
00:00:52.800 cost is low to get into it the effort is medium it's not that hard and the potential is actually
00:00:59.620 pretty high right now with the rise of personal brands on the low end you can make 50 bucks a day
00:01:04.200 doing like five thumbnails for 10 bucks but on the high end and this is what we invest in is 200 to
00:01:09.580 400 a day where we're paying for four to eight high quality thumbnails at 50 bucks each and you
00:01:15.020 might think to yourself who would pay for this and i'll be honest with you i didn't even know this
00:01:18.820 is a thing. I was visiting my buddy Sean at Space Station. I remember walking down the hallway and
00:01:23.780 he introduces me to a guy that's in a room and he says, that's our thumbnail designer. He had two
00:01:29.020 monitors testing different things and iterations and he worked on five different channels and it
00:01:33.780 made me realize that the pros that actually make money with YouTube will pay for this and that's
00:01:38.260 why you got to get good at it. So this is how you learn thumbnail design to get paid the big bucks.
00:01:42.440 Number one, you have to analyze dozens of viral thumbnails in your niche. There's tools like one
00:01:47.140 of 10 and view stats that will help you find those different sites and study exactly what
00:01:52.340 they're doing today because it will change to stand out on YouTube. Number two is create a
00:01:57.020 portfolio of thumbnails. Literally collect your favorite thumbnails to build a body of work that
00:02:03.280 you can use as reference material when you're designing your own. Number three is model best
00:02:07.420 performers. This might make a lot of sense but the truth is using ChatGPT you can upload the
00:02:12.640 portfolio of thumbnails that you found and then use that as the base foundation to design new and
00:02:17.800 better ones. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, well, this sounds great, but how do I
00:02:21.400 find customers? Let me teach you my audit to deal process. It's how all my agency friends sell what
00:02:27.580 they do easily. Number one is to pick a niche. I don't care if it's automotive, personal development,
00:02:33.780 doctors, running. The riches are in the niches. So pick an industry that you personally love that
00:02:39.760 you would love to create thumbnails for. Number two is scrape the leads. Build a targeted list
00:02:44.900 of potential buyers. And I'm talking, go on LinkedIn, go do your research and just build
00:02:50.060 a massive spreadsheet. I call this mapping the universe for your market. Number three, run an
00:02:55.200 audit. So if you're doing AI thumbnails, go to their YouTube channel, run through the whole video
00:02:59.820 catalog, give them suggestions on how you make it better. Record yourself doing a quick loom video,
00:03:05.020 60 seconds or less and then if you can add some examples of what you would do if you worked with
00:03:09.580 them add value to their life before you ever ask them for a dollar number four is offer service so
00:03:14.780 this is a quick fast action bonus some kind of guarantee to reduce the risk to get your foot in
00:03:20.300 the door something very simple not expensive they can make a decision they might get the email from
00:03:24.860 you with the video and reply and say sounds like a deal take the payment trust me get on the call
00:03:30.060 after they've paid now once you do some great work you can offer them stuff that might keep
00:03:34.220 you around longer which brings us to number four ai blog generation essentially you create content
00:03:40.620 that's highly specific for your customer that gets them awareness in their market so top of funnel
00:03:46.860 mid funnel and bottom of the funnel every piece of content serves a different purpose and that's
00:03:51.100 what makes it different even going as far and this is where you get paid the big bucks i'll
00:03:54.940 share in a second is to make it work for ai so now with the search being the new chat prompt
00:04:00.620 Companies want to rank inside the AI language model so that their business is recommended when
00:04:05.420 people ask questions of the universe for how they should solve their problems. The cost to get
00:04:09.960 started is very low. There's no tools involved. You just start using the free tools. The effort
00:04:14.380 is low. You literally just start asking the AI what you should do to work with these customers.
00:04:19.680 It'll tell you. The potential is medium. And the reason why is because blogs long-term with AI
00:04:25.220 getting so good at this, it just may not be as relevant as it is today. Because you could create
00:04:30.120 five really good blogs per day at about 10 bucks a piece for some of these larger seo farms out
00:04:35.620 there on the high end you could be making 200 to 500 a day because if you get good on this on the
00:04:40.980 high end you can get paid to help people rank in some of these new ai language models or get paid
00:04:45.740 through affiliate revenue by creating content with links to products you get paid when people buy
00:04:49.660 one of my clients timmer is actually using ai to create seo blog posts from podcast episodes for
00:04:55.680 clients and he makes over a hundred thousand a month doing this. This is why I think AI can
00:05:00.360 support but not replace the human process because the most powerful stories still come from the
00:05:05.560 human experience. AI just helps us tell them better. So this is how you get started. Number
00:05:09.800 one, model then modify. And what you want to do is you want to find the top 10 blogs in every niche
00:05:15.560 using tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest so that you can see where their outliers sit to find the
00:05:21.620 patterns. Number two is to actually use ChadGPT or some other AI to create a portfolio of writing
00:05:27.520 samples using the best blogs as inspiration. Don't copy, but use it to train exactly what
00:05:33.920 you want the outputs to look like so it's going to work for you. Number three is you got to rank
00:05:38.280 in search. So that's why there's these tools like rank.ai to help your blog post rank not only in
00:05:43.240 Google, but also in the large language models like ChadGPT. And I know this sounds really simple.
00:05:48.360 the challenge you're thinking is, well, where do I find the customer going to pay me the money
00:05:51.840 to do their SEO? Run the audit to deal process. It's the same thing. It's so simple, so powerful
00:05:57.980 that if you just do a little bit of work up front, show the buyer that you know what you're doing
00:06:01.960 and make it really easy for them to buy from you, they will. Which brings us to number three,
00:06:06.460 the faceless YouTube channel. This one's wild because I was like, I don't think AI can really
00:06:13.640 replace somebody like me. It turns out that I've been consuming AI generated YouTube content for
00:06:21.060 years. I didn't even know. There are those YouTube channels that you've seen where there's a person
00:06:25.560 talking and there's a bunch of B-roll explaining the concept, but there's nobody on screen and they
00:06:30.780 get hundreds of thousands of views. If you understood the CPMs, those people are making
00:06:35.600 50, 60, $70,000 a month off of YouTube ads. Now the cost to start on that one is medium because
00:06:42.440 there's more tools to get started. You need some of the editing software. The effort is medium
00:06:46.580 because there's some skills you got to develop storytelling in the narrative arc and how to
00:06:50.880 create good hooks and clips and packaging. And the potential is high because what I love about it is
00:06:55.520 it allows you to build and keep stacking income because the more it grows, the more you'll make.
00:07:01.180 So on the low end, yes, small channels might only make 10 to $50 a day. And there's a lot of effort
00:07:07.200 upfront to build to that first 10,000 subs, but on the high end, you could be making $500 a day
00:07:13.440 or more monetized, not only through the YouTube ad network, but also affiliate links. Here's how
00:07:18.820 we get started. Number one, pick a niche. I'm thinking categories that I know I can sell either
00:07:24.320 affiliates, brand deals, or get paid top CPMs cost per thousand based on what people are paying today
00:07:30.660 for other YouTube videos with that kind of content. The second is create your scripts. And again,
00:07:35.100 this is where we want to use tools like ChatGPT to outline them and to really find our narrative
00:07:40.880 style. See, what you want to figure out is what's your signature video type, and it all comes from
00:07:46.380 the script. It's the language you use. It's the cadence. It's the way you open up. How do you
00:07:51.240 explore it? Try to find a unique voice for you to create your faceless YouTube videos. Number three,
00:07:56.640 build your avatar. And again, it could be faceless where there's no person, or you can use Synthesia
00:08:01.240 or 11 Labs to generate a virtual AI avatar of you talking
00:08:05.580 so that it reads the scripts, but you're never on camera.
00:08:08.200 Number four is post and iterate.
00:08:10.060 See, most people talk about 10,000 hours
00:08:12.400 and you get really good at something.
00:08:14.080 It's not 10,000 repetition, it's 10,000 iterations,
00:08:17.740 meaning every time you post a new video,
00:08:19.940 try to make it 1% better.
00:08:21.540 Which brings us to number two, AI website building.
00:08:25.040 When a business starts, they need a website.
00:08:27.200 And there's 22 million small businesses in North America.
00:08:30.020 and in the past they're used to paying five, ten, twenty five thousand dollars for a website that
00:08:35.320 you can use AI to build it. There's literally these new no code building tools and you use AI
00:08:40.720 to generate not only the imagery, the copy, but the whole code structure and you can still charge
00:08:45.760 a lot of money if you're good at what you're doing and you can use these tools that we're
00:08:49.320 going to talk about later to have businesses pay you top dollar because they understand a website
00:08:53.220 is that important. The cool part is the cost is low because there's not a lot of software you
00:08:57.740 got to pay for or people you got to hire. The effort is medium because there's some technical
00:09:01.940 skills you may need to learn like hosting. And then the potential though is massively high because
00:09:06.480 if you perfect that one offer, you can scale it because think about every new business that needs
00:09:11.520 a website every day. On the low end, you might only make a hundred bucks a day and that might
00:09:14.960 be like generating one new website a day. But honestly, that's for very small businesses. On
00:09:19.540 the high end, you could be making 500 to a thousand dollars a day because you have multiple
00:09:24.260 clients and you're upselling them, check this out, AI SEO and hosting and AI automations because you
00:09:30.600 have the relationship with the customer. And it's kind of scary how many of these design agencies
00:09:35.340 are going to lose all their work to some 17 year old kid doing it with AI. The most valuable real
00:09:40.940 estate in 2025 isn't on earth. It's on the internet and it's going to be built with AI.
00:09:45.860 So here's how we get started. Number one, you got to pick a no code builder and get really good at
00:09:49.920 it. I like Framer AI, Bolt, or Reloom for people just getting started. Number two is you want to
00:09:54.680 generate the custom copy with ChatGPT and then visualize the copy with MidJourney. And the last
00:10:00.780 one is build two to three example websites to show buyers your skill. Like actually build stuff maybe
00:10:06.380 for your parents or for yourself that you think is a cool idea that demonstrates the quality of
00:10:10.580 your work. Now I know you're probably asking yourself like how do I sell this thing? Run the
00:10:14.660 audit to deal process which brings us to number one ai automation agency which is like the hotness
00:10:22.060 now the cost is medium because maybe for some projects you're going to need some software and
00:10:27.360 pay for pro versions of it and the effort is medium because there's a learning curve if you're
00:10:31.600 new to this but the cool part is is i taught it to my 12 year old son like anybody can learn this
00:10:36.660 if they're willing to just put their head down search and consume that information instead of
00:10:40.920 drowning themselves in personal development podcasts.
00:10:43.620 Like it's time to go learn.
00:10:45.640 And the potential is high
00:10:46.960 because you will be at the forefront
00:10:49.480 of artificial intelligence.
00:10:51.200 You'll be helping businesses reduce the complexity
00:10:53.940 in their business and you will find new opportunities
00:10:56.960 because you're sitting in those companies.
00:10:59.460 On the low end, you could be making 200 bucks a day.
00:11:02.160 That only takes one or two small clients
00:11:04.240 that you automate their workflows.
00:11:06.020 Every week, you just work on it.
00:11:07.420 On the high end though,
00:11:08.340 You could be making $1,000 to $2,500 a day
00:11:11.440 because that's where you're integrating
00:11:13.080 their current tool sets with other software integrations.
00:11:16.320 You're helping them with lead generation.
00:11:18.280 You're figuring out how to improve the backend workflow
00:11:20.680 so they can increase their capacity
00:11:22.220 to work with more customers.
00:11:23.740 So the problem you're solving
00:11:25.080 is for bigger customers that have more money,
00:11:27.640 which means they'll pay you
00:11:28.800 because the problems you solve makes them more money.
00:11:31.740 Here's my rule.
00:11:32.640 Every person on my team has to understand
00:11:34.660 how to do this anyway.
00:11:35.860 Even my head of finance sat down for three weeks
00:11:38.300 and built a complete end-to-end process
00:11:40.680 to automate all the bookkeeping.
00:11:42.580 This person loves spreadsheets,
00:11:44.280 didn't know anything about AI.
00:11:45.860 Automation isn't about replacing people.
00:11:47.980 It's about freeing them to focus on what matters most,
00:11:50.780 about being creative, focusing on results,
00:11:54.000 really figuring out what part's gonna move the needle
00:11:56.380 and anything that's just processing information
00:11:59.080 or moving things forward can be done by a computer.
00:12:01.980 So here's how we get started.
00:12:03.120 Number one, create a course of action.
00:12:05.380 Just ask Chad GPT,
00:12:06.820 If I wanted to start an automation agency,
00:12:08.900 what are the top 10 steps I should do?
00:12:10.620 Be detailed, be very concise, and it will tell you.
00:12:14.240 Number two is master one automation use case.
00:12:17.580 See, most people that get into this
00:12:18.800 start thinking about like,
00:12:19.900 oh, the freaking things they could do with AI.
00:12:21.960 And you could, but then you're not really 0.76
00:12:23.840 going deep on anything.
00:12:25.000 I'm talking about like cold outreach, team training,
00:12:27.740 building bots, onboarding automation,
00:12:30.100 like pick one specific area and go deep
00:12:32.980 because specialists get paid.
00:12:35.080 The third, join a community.
00:12:36.820 you want to be around other people doing the thing so you can learn faster. I like Dave Ebelar. If
00:12:42.180 you're more technical and you want to build like agentic systems, if you want to learn like content
00:12:46.600 and automation, go follow Steven Pope and join their communities. Now I understand this one's
00:12:51.600 a little harder to run the audit to deal process because we're talking about internal workflows,
00:12:55.800 but what you do instead is you just reach out to customers and say, Hey, I'm new. I'm looking to
00:12:59.980 build some case studies. I will go fix this problem for you for free. It costs you nothing.
00:13:04.540 all I ask is that if I over deliver on what I promised
00:13:07.400 that you allow me to use this project as a case study
00:13:10.260 so I can share it with other customers going forward.
00:13:12.200 That's the win-win.
00:13:13.120 They get free, problem solved, you get a case study,
00:13:16.140 you do five to 10 of those, trust me,
00:13:18.240 they'll wanna keep you around if you're good
00:13:19.600 and they'll refer you to people they know.
00:13:21.400 Now, if you're actually building real AI technology,
00:13:25.120 like real products, real software,
00:13:26.780 not just doing this automation stuff
00:13:28.240 and you wanna see if I might be interested
00:13:29.840 in partnering with you,
00:13:30.820 then just find me on Instagram and send me the word venture
00:13:33.420 and we'll have a chat to see if what you're working on makes sense but if you want to learn
00:13:36.860 how i go from zero to a million this year click here and i'll see you on the other side