9 Ways I’ve Used ChatGPT to Make Money in 2023

If you want to use ChatGPT to make money, you’ve got to get creative. That’s because the language model that’s been the “talk of the town” since late 2022 is powerful, but not “all powerful.”

As soon as I started playing around with ChatGPT for the first time in early 2023, I knew I could use it to make more money in my business.

And I don’t just mean spinning up thousands of articles to post spammy, low-quality articles for backlinks (if you know what I’m talking about, don’t even think about it).

I mean you can leverage ChatGPT to make money in totally ethical, legal, and creative ways.

This works particularly well if you already have a business (if not, start here) because ChatGPT can essentially work as an extra teammate in some ways.

Let’s start with some popular ideas I’ve seen around the web for making money from ChatGPT. These ideas and examples come from real entrepreneurs growing real businesses and using ChatGPT to increase profits. I’ll mix in a few ways I’ve personally made money from ChatGPT already as we go.

1. “Outsource” Mundane Tasks

Perhaps the most powerful thing you can do right now with ChatGPT and other AI tools is “outsource” mundane tasks that used to take up lots of your time.

If you spend a large portion of your day responding to email, for example, have ChatGPT craft 3-5 “canned” email responses and then store them up in something like TextExpander (my personal favorite) so you can quickly and easily respond to emails in a fraction of the time.

If you spend lots of time brainstorming ideas or writing copy, ChatGPT can help with that too.

This first money-making tip really encompasses much of what I’ll cover in all the other tips, but this is really a mindset question.

You have to train yourself to start asking:

“Can ChatGPT help me do this any more efficiently?”

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The more you ask that, the more you’ll be surprised at how ChatGPT (and AI in general) can help you make more money.

This is called opportunity cost. And for every time you spend MORE of your time and effort on something, you’re saying “no” to something else you could be working on to make more money.

2. Brainstorm Business Ideas

If the idea of using ChatGPT to make money sounds like a good one to you, but you’re not sure where to start… well… ChatGPT can help there too!

Just open up ChatGPT and ask for a few business ideas.

You might get something back like I did:

But let’s say you’re a solopreneur and don’t want to build a giant sustainable manufacturing facility (idea #3 above).

Instead, set a few parameters like: “I want to work from home. On my computer. And don’t want to store inventory.”

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And voila: you have 3 businesses you can start from home, on your computer and without expensive inventory. Thanks, ChatGPT!

So while you can review my list below for more ideas on making extra cash with ChatGPT, the truth is, ChatGPT might even be a better option for exploring ideas.

But don’t tell my blog editor I said that.

3. Create a Digital Product or App

Did you know ChatGPT can code? I mean, not teach you how to code, it can literally write the code you need to make an app function properly.

I personally used ChatGPT to code this freelance rate calculator in record time. Could I have coded it myself? Probably. Did I need to? No. (Again, see point 1.)

My team and I also used ChatGPT to solve a major programming issue we were facing. When we released this product, we thought we could just give the customer a browser cookie and they’d have access forever.

That was wrong (we’re not programmers, really).

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So, instead, we had ChatGPT program a simple registration and login form so paying customers could access the product more easily.

In its first week, we made $2,000+ (a lot thanks to ChatGPT’s help with the code).

If you’re a web designer, you can offer custom code to your clients and ChatGPT can write it up in a fraction of the time—often with no errors the first time around.

If you’re an app developer, consider how helpful ChatGPT can be when developing a product—it’s an extra dev to bounce ideas off of while coding. Someone extra to check your work.

In my opinion, coding is one of the most powerful things ChatGPT can currently do. If you’re not using it to make money yet, there’s a whole world of opportunity for you.

4. Create a Digital Information Product

Of course, even more than coding and development, ChatGPT is great at language.

Naturally, using ChatGPT to help create a digital information product is a great way to make some extra money.

I’m referring to ebooks, scripts, templates, worksheets, guidebooks, manuals, and any other written product you can sell as a pdf or epub document.

Back to our product, The Freelance Files, we leveraged (and will continue to leverage) ChatGPT to augment our custom-made files, contracts, templates and scripts for freelancers.

We made close to $1,000 in a day from this product which ChatGPT assisted us in creating.

If you’ve always wanted to write a book, but never had an editor to bounce ideas off of, try ChatGPT. You can put in portions of your written product and then ask ChatGPT to help fill in the gaps or clarify your writing.

It’s like having your own creative partner, editor, proofreader, and confidant.

5. Generate Business Pitches

In my own business, I do a lot of pitching. I send pitches to potential clients, potential sponsors, and potential partners.

And sometimes, I worry I’m not saying the right thing. Or I’m not expressing my value enough. Or I’m leaving out critical information.

That’s where ChatGPT can come in to help you make more money from your business pitches.

For example, I asked ChatGPT this question:

I ended my client pitch with this line. Do you think something else would be more effective?

“I look forward to hearing from you.”

So ChatGPT used everything it has learned by sweeping the internet and gave me a crash course in professionally ending a business pitch email.

Alternatively, you could give ChatGPT a few parameters and ask it to write a first-draft of a sales pitch or cold email.

The options are nearly endless.

6. Negotiate Higher Pay

Did you know ChatGPT can take all of the negotiation advice posted on the web over dozens of years and apply it to your situation to negotiate higher pay?

Whether you’re a freelancer looking to raise your rates or have a traditional job and need a raise, ChatGPT can help.

Take a look at this conversation I had with ChatGPT where I asked it to negotiate with me. I told it I would play the role of a budget-conscious client and ChatGPT should play the role of freelancer.

What ensued was a very polite-yet-firm negotiation in which the freelancer stood “their” ground while still helping me see the value in their work.

If you’re not sure what to say to a client or a boss or how to negotiate with them, do a few practice rounds with ChatGPT.

Even better: if you’re negotiating over email, you have the time to plug the actual negotiation right into ChatGPT to see what it recommends.

This one tip alone could help you increase your pay by $5,000, $10,000 or even more at a full-time job. Or it could help you raise your freelance rates by 2x, 3x, or more.

7. Generate Engaging Emails & Social Content

Here on our blog, we bring in a lot of revenue from our email newsletter. Sponsors pay us for placement in our weekly newsletter called ‘Freelance Fire.’

If we can get more email opens or clicks by asking ChatGPT to write more compelling subject lines or in-email content, we can increase our monthly revenue anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 or more.

Just from one quick ChatGPT conversation. That’s a good amount of money on the table.

You can do this too. If you’re just getting started with email marketing, you’ll quickly learn it takes a long time to write quality emails.

But if you can use ChatGPT to help craft your emails and increase engagement at the same time, you’ll be making more money before you know it.

While I’m at it, this goes for social media posts as well. Coming up with something witty to say everytime you post on Instagram can be a challenge. But ChatGPT’s brain never gets burned out and is only limited by the input you give it.

8. Write Blog Posts & Youtube Scripts

If your business relies on pageviews and video views to make money, then ChatGPT can be a great option for making more money from your content.

Our blog editor, Alex, uses ChatGPT to create content recommendations, generate prompts, and then write portions of content based on those prompts.

At first glance, these hybrid articles (part human, part ChatGPT) have good results. Trending up in traffic and engagement.

And we’re not even close to being the first to do this.

CNET was among the first big publishers to test AI-generated content (with mixed results). Content powerhouse Medium is allowing clearly-labeled articles written by ChatGPT. And scientists are even beginning to publish research papers authored by ChatGPT!

We’ve used ChatGPT to assist us in generating hundreds of freelancing terms in our freelance glossary which enhances our reader experience by giving more context to our articles.

And it’s not just written content ChatGPT can help with.

We’ve taken scripts of our full-length YouTube videos and asked ChatGPT to create YouTube “Shorts” (60-second versions) from them.

ChatGPT can help you make money by writing compelling YouTube, podcast, or TikTok scripts to gain more followers and grow your revenue.

And products like RightBlogger are leveraging the power of AI to do even more of this work for you.

There are, perhaps, more opportunities in written content than anywhere else to make money from ChatGPT.

9. Optimize Sales Copy

If you don’t consider yourself much of a copywriter, then you can use ChatGPT to make money by enhancing your sales copy.

It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell more of your “thing” on Etsy.

Or if you’re trying to spice up a Facebook Marketplace listing from your latest yard sale haul.

Or if your team has been working on a brand new product and you’re not sure how to present it in the most compelling way possible.

ChatGPT can help.

You can ask ChatGPT for headline ideas. You can ask it to shorten your copy. Or make it sound more personable.

Oftentimes, when it comes to sales copy, a small tweak or change can lead to huge results in sales.

BONUS: Learn a Money-Making Skill

If you don’t feel like any of these ideas fit what you’re looking for, maybe ChatGPT can’t make you money directly.

But what it CAN do is help you learn a new money-making skill.

If you want to learn how to develop websites, use ChatGPT to walk you through the entire process of setting up hosting, writing your first HTML or CSS, and publishing your website to the internet.

If you want to become a mechanic, ChatGPT can help you dismantle and reassemble your car from start to finish (my lawyers make me say we’re not responsible if you try this).

If you want to learn how to trade stocks or invest in real estate, ChatGPT knows how you can make money.

It’s literally like having a personal tutor on almost any subject available 24/7 for free. All you have to do is ask.

A Final Word of Caution…

“How can I get people excited about making money with ChatGPT while also warning them about the downsides of it in 5 sentences or less?”

That’s a prompt I entered into ChatGPT just now.

Here’s what it had to say in response:

The prospect of making money from ChatGPT is undeniably enticing, offering individuals unprecedented opportunities for financial growth and professional exploration. However, a responsible approach is paramount. By acknowledging the potential downsides, such as job displacement, ethical concerns, and the need for ongoing education, individuals can navigate this field with informed decision-making and contribute to a sustainable and beneficial integration of AI in our economic landscape.

And while it sounds robotic and dry, it’s not wrong.

There are lots of ways to make money with ChatGPT.

But each of the ways I’ve listed in this post are NOT turnkey—you can’t just put something into ChatGPT and print money from it.

You still have to put a human spin on it. You have to put in some human effort.

And while that may seem like a bummer, it’s really not. Because, even when making money, if we outsource everything to AI, we risk losing our humanity. And—even in business—what’s the fun in that?

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