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

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

I'll see you on the other