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 convertingget-rich-quick-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 -convertingdesigning,where you judesigning,you’rest like I’m ryou’re, “I’meally good at prompts a, “I’mprompts,”nd I just touch it,prompts,”touch it, and it creates images. That’s not what I’m talking about. The cool part is the cost is low to get into it. The effort is medium. It’s not that hardhard,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 2hard,it’s00 to 400 a day it’sday,where we’re paying for 4 to eight highqualday,8 high-qualityity 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 sta8 high-qualitythe spacetion. I remember walking down the hallway the spacehallway,and he introduces me to a guy that’s in a room hallway,room,and he says, “That’s our thumbnail designer.” He had two monitors testing different things and iterations room,iterations,and he worked on five different channels iterations,channels,and it made me realize that the pros that actually make money with YouTube will pay for this channels,this,and that’s why you gothis,you’vet 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 tyou’veThere areools like oneThere areOne of 10 and view statsOneView 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 crView Statsis toeate 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 to,is using chat GPT,ChatGPT,, 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 dealChatGPT,-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, th-to-dealor running;e 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 talkinor running;sayingg 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, givsayingcatalog, ande 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 catalog, and, fast-actionbonus. 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, fast-actionas 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 nasThere areo 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,There areblogs, long-term,, with AI getting so good at this, just may not be as relevant as it is tthey areday. 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 onthey areat 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 atproducts;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 Rusproducts;SEMrushh or Uber Suggest so that you can see where their outliers sit to find the patterns. Number two is to actually use Chad GPSEMrushChatGPTT 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 ChatGPThaveto rank in search. So that’s why there’s thavethere arehese tools like rank.aithere areRank.ai AI to help your blog post rank not only in Google but also in the large language models like Chad GPTRank.aiChatGPT.. And I know this sounds really simple. The challenge you’re thinking isChatGPT.thinking of, well, where do I find the customer going thinking ofcustomer who isto pay me the money to do their SEO? Run the audit to deal process.customer who isdeal with the It’s the same thing. It’s so simple, sodeal with thesimple and 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 generatedsimple and-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 -generatedscreen,and they get hundreds of thousands of views. If you understood the CPMs, those people are making 50, 60, $7screen,60, or0,000 a month off of YouTube ads. Now, the cost to start on that one is medium because there’s m60, orthere areore tools to get started. You need some of the editing software. The effort is medium because there’s sthere arethere areome skills you got there arehaveto develop storyhavedevelop, liketelling 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 butdevelop, likenetwork but also affiliate links. Here’s how we get started. Number one, pick a niche. I’m thinking of of categories that I know I can sell either as affiliates ores or brand deals orget paid top CPMs (cost per thousand)thousand) based on what people are paying today for other YouTube videos with that kind of content. The second is tois to create your scripts. And again, this is where we want to use tools like ChatGPTto outline them and to really find our narrative style. See, what you want to figure out is what your signature video type? Antype is. 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 type is. faceless,where there’s no person, or you can use synthesiafaceless,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, Synthesiarepetitions;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 2repetitions;there are2 million small businesses in North America. And in the past, they’re used to paying 5, 10, $2there are10, or5,000 for a website that you can use AI to build 10, or.it. There’s l.There areiterally these new no codeThere are-code building tools. And you use AI to generate not only the imagery, th-codeimagery ande copy, but theimagery and but also 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 but alsohaveto pay for or people you got havehaveto hire. The effort is medium because there’s shavethere areome technical skills you may need to learn there arelearn,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 outlearn,out this, AI SEO, anout thisSEO andd 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 SEO andinternet,and it’s going to be built with AI. So, here’s how we get started. Number one, you got internet,haveto pick a no codehave-code builder and get really good at it. I like frame-codeFrame AI, Bolt FrameBolt,or Reloom for people just getting started. Number two is you want to generate the custom copy with chat GPBolt,ChatGPTT and then visualize the copy with midjourney. ChatGPTMidjourney. And the last one is buMidjourney. is toild two to three example websites to show buyers your skill. likeis toLike actually build stuff Likestuff,maybe for your parents or for yourself stuff,yourself,that you think is a cool idea that demonstrates the quality of your work. Now, I know you’re probably asking yourself yourself,yourself,like, “How do I sell this thing?” Run the audit to deal process.yourself,deal with the Which brings us indeal with theto number one, the AItothe 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 I taught it to my 12-year-old son. Like anybody can learn this if they’re willing to just put their head down, searchsearch,and consume that information instead of drowning themselves in personal development podcast. Lsearch,podcasts. ike 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 podcasts. business,and you will find new opportunities cuz youbusiness,because’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 whose workflowsbecausee workflows you automate every week. You just work on it. On the high end though, you could be making a,002,000 to 2500 2,0002,500a 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 make2,500makes 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 makeend-to-endprocess to automate all the bookkeeping. This person loves spreadsheets, diend-to-endspreadsheets and dn’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 spreadsheets and creative, and abouton 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 creative, and abou tChatGPT,, 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 ChatGPT, the master automation use case. See, most people that get into this start thinking about like a the master, like ,ll 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 c, like,about thingsold outreach, team training, building bots, onboarding, about thingsonboarding, andomation. Like,onboarding, and. Like, pick one specific area and go deep because specialists get paid. The third is tois to 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 AICAIC systems. If you want to learn about 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 with 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 overdeliveroverdeliver 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 a freea free problem solved. You get a case study, andstudy, andch-quick 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, and 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