Chapter 1: 10xYOU: From Concept To Cash
Go from nothing to a compelling set of salable content with the power of AI.
Hi I'm Ben, and I'm the chief co-creator for Money Monday's here at 10xYOU. Here's is the first chapter in our journey. Would love to hear your thoughts.
In upcoming chapters, I'll tell you a little more about myself and my background. but for today, let's dive right in!
No doubt if you have spent any time on social media lately, from X to YouTube, you’ve come across many people hawking easy money through AI.
But is it really that easy? Sure it is, there have been plenty of folks who have been able to leverage AI to make money.
The key is to create a compelling set of content, put that content somewhere on the internet, and then sell access to that content via free, ready-to-use tools.
STORY
Jim was a corporate employee who was finding his work life very unfulfilling, While he loved the money that came with the job, he was not a fan of the endless meetings, the unceasing corporate speak and propaganda, and the time wasted working, what he thought was, a soulless job. He loved to play guitar and enjoyed his time off and weekends, where he was able to do what he wanted, and always thought to himself how great it would be if he was able to make a living from music. But he knew that was a tough slog. Researching passive income methods on the internet drove him to sources like Passive Profit, where he came across several possible ways to take this love of music and turn it into an income. While it's not at the point where he can quit yet, he’s become a new man. He looks forward to his time building content and interacting with the community he created with AI's help. Before AI, he would never have had the time to build the content that drove him towards his goals.
HOW TO
Jim used several steps to go from zero to profit using AI. The overall concept is to use AI to create content, place that content in a protected place on the internet, and then charge a fee for his customers to access that content. Since he loved music, and playing the guitar, that’s where he focused his content. And you can too.
The steps are this simple:
- come up with a topic
- generate content
- place in Notion
- gate it with Gumroad
STEP 1 - Envision It
Decide on the topic of the content that you want to create. You can go down two specific paths, or even combine both. You can either create content in a space that you enjoy, or you can create content that sells. Preferably both.
For example, Jim created guitar-playing content, which was a space that he loved. You may decide to create content in a space that you have no experience in, but you can create content that is valuable by leveraging AI. Let’s say that you decide to do the latter: create popular content. Research the types of content that are popular.
Typical popular spaces are money, time and happiness (some of the main tenets of 10xYOU as well). The ideal content space is both something that you are interested in and something that has an audience.
STEP 2 - Generate It
Once you have decided on the topic of content that you want to create, sign up for a generative AI service. You have a choice of many, and your selection changes every day.
I’ll use ChatGPT for my examples, but you can feel free to use Anthropic’s Claude or any other service. You can start with the free service, but you may find that you will butt up against limits, in which case you might wish to pay for a subscription (typically around $20 a month) which is a fairly low price point.
Once you have your subscription ready, you are ready to start.
Decide on the audience you want to reach.
This will help you to tailor your content to your audience. Are you going after novices or advanced customers? What type and form of content would appeal to them? For our examples, we will be creating text content, but there are sources available to create audio and video content as well, and we will go into more detail on future Money Mondays.
Right now, let's focus on creating high-value text-based content for your prospective customers. Let’s say that we wanted to create a set of content to help people create an audience from scratch, which is a popular topic. Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about creating an audience from scratch, that is where the power AI comes in.
Now that you have decided on the topic and type of content you want to create, you can start the creation process. Let’s create a manual on creating an audience from scratch. First, go to your favorite generative AI tool and ask for an outline.
“I’m creating a guide for people to build an audience from zero. Can you provide an outline”
Your AI will then create an outline. These will be the sections of your manual. You then take each section and ask for your AI to build out each section in order. Let's say that your outline starts with:
- Introduction
- Provide Valuable Content
- Run Contests and giveaways
Then ask your bot to write an introduction. Then ask your bot to write the section called “Provide Valuable Content”. It will write that section. If it writes sections that have subsections, then ask it to fill out that section. Keep going until you have gone through the entire outline and it has created all of the sections and subsections.
I call this “Progressive Creation” using the bot itself to create the outline and then fill out the rest of the sections.
Just keep going until you have built out the full outline, then added section as you see fit.
STEP 3 - Notion It
Now that you have create this content, you will need to have a place to store it. While there are many places where you can store documentation online, one of the best free places is at Notion.
While there is a bit of a learning curve, you can use Notion to create a linkable document with all of the content that you have created. You can either place it into a single section, or multiple hyperlinked sections.
For more info on Notion, check out their website at notion.so
Notion is an all-in-one workspace that combines note-taking, project management, and collaboration tools in one intuitive platform. With Notion, users can create and organize their ideas, tasks, and documents in customizable formats such as databases, lists, boards, and calendars.
There is no need to use Notion specifically, It's just one of many places that you can store content for free. If you like, you can even use Google Docs. It doesn't really matter where you store the content, as long as you store it somewhere where it is publicly accessible and preferably very hard to find.
A note on "securing" your content. Listen, its already really hard for anything to just get found on the internet, so the likelihood that someone will just stumble across the link to your content is infinitesimal. Don't worry, nobody will steal it.
Once you have all of the content pasted into Notion (or your tool of choice) then edit it.
I repeat, EDIT IT.
Do not simply post AI generated stuff into your document and call it a day. This is were he separate the pros from the amateurs.
Too many folks in this space do this and it creates a poor experience. AI did the heavy lifting of creating the content for you - the least you could do is read through it and edit it. Look out for words like "delve", "dive", "tapestry" or "testament" - these are in AI-ese, which indicates that they have been created by AI.
Now if you ask me, that not a problem - since, as I mentioned earlier, AI is the work of many humans, so really when you are writing something with AI, you are literally writing with help from humans. But do you really want to put something out without your personal stamp?
The best content is created by both humans and AI, not just AI.
STEP 4 - Gumroad it
This is your final step. Once you have created, stored and edited your content, its time to figure out how to sell it. Basically, you are selling access to the link where you stored your content.
You spent a lot of time creating that content so you need to find a service which will charge your customers a fee for access to the link. enter Gumroad.
Gumroad is an online platform that empowers creators to sell their digital products directly to their audience. From e-books and courses to music and artwork, Gumroad provides creators with the tools they need to easily distribute and monetize their creations. With features like customizable storefronts, payment processing, and audience management, Gumroad simplifies the process of selling digital goods, allowing creators to focus on what they do best – creating.
I'm not going to give you a lot of information on Gumroad, their site does a pretty good job of describing how it works. Go to the site, sign up and get familiar with it. You are going to set up offers in Gumroad where your customers will be able to buy a link to all of the content that you just created.
Remember to use AI to write your sales copy and other descriptions of the kinds of content that you will be selling.
RECAP
- come up with a topic
- generate content
- place in notion
- gate with Gumroad
You are probably saying to yourself right now: man, that is a lot of work.
Yes it is.
It's simple but not easy.
You’ll need to learn the tools and create the content, but in the end you will have saleable content that you can pitch. We won't be going into the details of how to sell your content (that will be a topic for a future Money Monday).
THOUGHTS?
I've just provided you with a blueprint to use AI to create a ton of content, in a space that you are familiar with (or not). I'd love to get your feedback. what did you think of this chapter?
Do you think this was too much content or not enough? Would you like to see this in a different form, or maybe do into depth in any of the areas above?
Please let me know.
Thanks!
Ben Caldwell, Editor, Money Mondays, 10xYOU
|