How To Make Money With ChatGPT: Guide to Passive Income Success

OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has opened up new ways to develop a side hustle or, in some cases, a full-time career from the comfort of home.

For example, you can earn money using ChatGPT to start a blog, complete virtual assistant tasks, create a business, post on social media, and more. You can even sell ChatGPT prompts, if you get good at using the tool.

If you’re wondering how to make money online with ChatGPT, here are seven strategies to try.

7 ways to make money with ChatGPT

There are countless ways to make money with ChatGPT’s support. Here are a few of the top ones we recommend:

1. Start an affiliate blog.
2. Build virtual assistants for professionals.
3. Create and sell professional ChatGPT prompts.
4. Start your own business.
5. Brainstorm social media posts.
6. Offer language translation and localization services.
7. Create and sell e-learning materials.

1. Start an affiliate blog

An affiliate blog allows you to sell products and services via digital marketing. If you choose your affiliates right and set up ads, you could potentially bring in steady, significant revenue.

What you’d do

The point of an affiliate blog is to write about topics you’re passionate about, then include affiliate links in the copy for products or services you recommend. For example, you might write a post about learning to bake sourdough bread and include offers for a Dutch oven you love or a cookbook you suggest for beginners. Every time someone buys a product through a monetized link, you’ll earn a commission.

ChatGPT comes into play by helping you create the content for your blog. It can even come up with ideas for you if you get stuck, but you should avoid relying on it to create your content from scratch — people can spot AI-generated content pretty easily, and prospective partners don’t always take kindly to their products being marketed by posts not written by humans.

How to do it

1. Come up with a target niche you want your blog to focus on. For example, I manage a travel blog that covers my adventures across the globe. Start with your interests and go from there.
2. Have ChatGPT brainstorm topics, and then use it to create blog outlines, come up with questions people might ask about the topic, and even suggest improvements for your articles.
3. Create a publishing schedule. Try to publish new content somewhat regularly.
4. Sign up for an affiliate service like CJ Affiliate or Partnerize. Then, browse these platforms to find relevant products or services you can mention in your blog.
5. Set up Google AdSense to earn money whenever someone clicks on your blog with targeted ads on the page.
6. Optimize your blog for search engines so you get more visitors, and keep using ChatGPT to curate more content often.

Who is this best for?

Blogging is a good choice for individuals with a large online following. The biggest hurdle when creating a blog is getting people to read it, so having many followers can increase your chances of success.

It’s also good for people with a lot of personal experience with niche hobbies or interests.

2. Build virtual assistants for professionals

If you’re already a virtual assistant or are interested in building and training virtual assistant bots to help busy entrepreneurs with specific tasks, you could make money with ChatGPT.

What you’d do

By learning how to use prompting skills and having some patience, you can use ChatGPT to operate a virtual assistant service that helps entrepreneurs with various tasks, allowing the business owner to focus on bigger issues.

ChatGPT virtual assistants can save time by drafting communications and helping to generate content ideas. They can also help with sales and email marketing, social media content, and the day-to-day administrative tasks that keep a business going.

How to do it

1. Identify the niche you want to work within and the service you’ll provide.
2. Develop a pricing and fee structure and a contract outlining what you do and do not provide so there are no surprises for you or your clients.
3. Depending on your business structure, you may need to register your business with the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
4. Set up a website so potential clients can find you, interact with you virtually, and try out your services.

Who is this best for?

Training ChatGPT to help with a specific business need can take some time. Therefore, we recommend it to people with the patience and availability to tinker with the tool until they can develop a sound system that works.

If you want to build an integrated assistant that works within other applications, you’ll also need to have a bit of programming experience. This could be a good option if you’re someone who’s comfortable tinkering with APIs, data scraping, and system backends.

3. Create and sell professional ChatGPT prompts

Getting ChatGPT to deliver the desired results often requires using the right prompts. While you can ask the chatbot anything, you would need to learn how to communicate with ChatGPT to get the most helpful answers. This is where building prompts becomes essential.

What you’d do

People who know how to get the best results from ChatGPT can turn their skills into a business selling prompt templates for various professionals. Educators, content creators, and social media marketers, among others, can benefit from AI to create materials and brainstorm ways to improve existing content.

How to do it

1. Decide what types of prompts you want to develop. It’s better to choose a niche, such as personal finance content creation or social media marketing posts about health and wellness, so you can tailor your prompts.
2. Test and play with ChatGPT to find what works and what doesn’t. This will take a lot of trial and error, in my experience, as ChatGPT doesn’t always like to follow instructions. Part of the process is finding commands the tool responds to and documenting these.
3. Turn your prompts into templates others can mimic and personalize for their needs.
4. Use an AI prompt marketplace like PromptBase, PromptFlat, or even Etsy to help you research and sell your prompt lists online. But before you sign up, pay close attention to each site’s fees to correctly estimate your potential earnings.

Who is this best for?

Creating and selling ChatGPT prompts is best for someone in the content creation landscape. You’ll know exactly what other content creators are looking for, meaning you can create the best and most effective prompts.

4. Start your own business

Although ChatGPT can’t do the work of running a business for you, it can help you improve your existing strategies and develop new ones to better compete in your industry.

What you’d do

With ChatGPT’s help, you can get your new business off the ground. It can help you with everything from developing new ideas to writing a business plan. Once you have that down, it can even help you develop a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy or outline content ideas to help you increase your output. You can even use it to write product descriptions, if you’re selling a good, or put together job postings if you’re looking to onboard employees.

You can also use ChatGPT to automate customer service tasks like summarizing customer complaints, generating responses to customer inquiries, and answering questions about your products or services.

How to do it

1. Brainstorm business ideas with ChatGPT by narrowing down your unique selling point (USP) and target market. For example, if you know you want to open some kind of cafe, ChatGPT can help you develop a theme (like a book cafe) or specialty (like smoothies and gluten-free snacks).
2. Once you have your business idea, ask ChatGPT to write a business plan. While this plan will need some tinkering with real-life data, it can get you started with a:
• Mission statement
• Business model
• Operations plan
• Marketing plan
• Financial plan
• Organization hierarchy
• Expansion plan
3. Refine your offerings. In the cafe example, the next step might be curating a menu and marketing your new business. Ask ChatGPT to come up with recipes and descriptions. You can also ask it for fun marketing ideas to get the word out about your grand opening.

Who is this best for?

If you've always wanted to start a business but aren't sure where to begin, ChatGPT can help you brainstorm business ideas to get a feel for logistics and possibilities.

While you won’t want to rely on ChatGPT 100% for your new business, it can be helpful if you know the basics but just need a little inspiration. We recommend consulting with professionals — such as accountants and business advisors — rather than just going off of AI guidance.

5. Brainstorm social media posts

Most creators want to have millions of people view and love their work, but finding the right combination to make a video go viral can feel almost impossible. ChatGPT might be able to help.

What you’d do

While you can’t predict what will get lots of views, you can use ChatGPT to analyze common features of viral content. Using that information, you can create content with ChatGPT’s help to include details that have made past videos successful.

Many videos are scripted or have a written structure that creators use to guide a project. Use ChatGPT to write scripts and storyboards and save time in the pre- and post-production processes.

How to do it

1. Choose a few recent viral posts similar to what you’re going for and enter them into ChatGPT. You can also ask ChatGPT to find viral posts for you, asking it to identify common themes.
2. Ask ChatGPT to create a post for the social media site of your choice using these attributes. If you want to make a video, ask ChatGPT to write a script instead.
3. Refine these posts to fit your voice and reach your intended audience, and include any word count limitations or other requirements so ChatGPT can get it right.
4. As your subscriber base grows, you can provide ChatGPT with the demographics of the people watching your videos and ask it to analyze the data and help you generate content specific to their needs.

Who is this best for?

Using ChatGPT for social media posts is great for social media managers who need help developing content ideas. Sometimes, generating content for a variety of clients can be tricky, especially if you’re not well-versed in their niche.

6. Offer language translation and localization services

ChatGPT is available worldwide and can write in various languages, including English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Italian, French, and Chinese. While it might not compete with Google Translate audio translation services, ChatGPT can help you translate written work into multiple languages.

What you’d do

Much of ChatGPT’s training is on multiple types of texts in many different languages, which makes it effective at translating words as well as the tone and intent behind the original text.

For example, ChatGPT can translate marketing materials and content into multiple languages for businesses looking to expand into international markets. ChatGPT can help you translate emails, reports, and product information in near real-time so that collaboration can happen faster and more organically.

How to do it

1. Paste any original text into ChatGPT and ask it to translate it into the required language.
2. Check over ChatGPT’s translations carefully to ensure there are no mistakes and the original intent remains intact.

Who is this best for?

ChatGPT can help you speed up your work process and potentially handle more client volume if you speak a second language or are a skilled translator. You should not attempt this side hustle if you don’t speak and understand the language you’re translating yourself, since you won’t be able to spot inaccuracies.

7. Create and sell e-learning materials

Creating educational materials that people can purchase through your website or social media platforms can be a great way to diversify your income. With ChatGPT, making the content doesn’t have to take forever.

What you’d do

Many social media influencers sell courses, tutorials, study guides, and other educational materials on their websites and can generate healthy revenue from the sales of these products.

You could use ChatGPT to support you in writing the content and providing insightful expertise.

How to do it

1. Use ChatGPT to develop the outline for your content.
2. If you get stuck on specific sections as you write, interact with ChatGPT to overcome writer's block and get more ideas flowing. Ask it questions, bounce ideas off of it, and ask it to refine your text.
3. Run pieces of your draft through ChatGPT and ask the tool to look for opportunities to add more insight and detail. Ask it how to make the content more useful to readers.

Who is this best for?

Using ChatGPT to create course content is best for any professional looking to diversify their offerings and work toward passive income. Nearly anyone who has expert knowledge in a particular niche can benefit. There are courses out there on everything from becoming a freelance writer who makes six figures a year to learning how to sell print-on-demand T-shirts.

Tips to make money with ChatGPT

ChatGPT offers various opportunities for people looking to make money or start a business. You may even find ways to retire early with ChatGPT by using it to help you create a side hustle or start a small business that could increase your income.

Let’s explore some essential tips to help you maximize your ability to benefit from ChatGPT.

Stay up-to-date on new ChatGPT features

ChatGPT and artificial intelligence (AI) are developing rapidly, and there are always new features and plugins. Stay up-to-date with the latest features and use them to your advantage.

Look for courses and training that help you effectively use ChatGPT in your chosen niche. For example, learning how to write better prompts can help you better use ChatGPT.

You should also pay attention to where your competitors or industry leaders are using AI. Although you may not be able to integrate every new feature to your advantage, keeping a general awareness of what the technology is used for and where it's headed can help you keep your finger on the pulse.

Avoid over-relying on ChatGPT for content

ChatGPT’s responses are only as good as the information and background it’s given. To help avoid generic content, ask ChatGPT specific questions and provide it with the full context of your project.

You’d likely see better results by providing ChatGPT with things such as:

• Target audience: What type of customer are you trying to reach? Examples might be people who enjoy traveling, students, or people in a certain industry.
• Format: Are you writing a blog post, creating a website, developing a recipe, or something else?
• Style: Do you want the writing to be formal, humorous, approachable, or another tone?
• Purpose: Is your goal to educate, entertain, provide professional information, or some other intention?

This can help you create a base or outline for whatever content you’re trying to create. From there, start drafting the writing yourself and lean on the tool for ideas and improvements.

Avoid simply repackaging what ChatGPT generates and putting your name on it. While it's fine to use ChatGPT to create ideas or train it to perform a repetitive task, you should ensure you provide value to your customers.

While ChatGPT’s ability to respond and distill text is impressive, it still can’t replace a human being who understands their subject and is passionate about sharing it with others.

Follow AI experts and developers

AI is developing quickly, and staying aware of the latest changes and trends can be time consuming. Follow experts to stay current on what’s happening in the industry.

Use social media platforms to help you find and connect with experts and developers in the AI industry and your chosen niche. Watch how large companies integrate artificial intelligence into their products. Attend webinars, read blogs, and subscribe to newsletters to help you stay current.

While following experts is a great way to stay informed, connecting with others with the same interests can also be beneficial. Immersing yourself in your favorite topics and having in-depth discussions with other enthusiasts can help you refine and implement changes to your products in real life.

Implement feedback from your customer or follower base

As with most businesses, keeping your customers at the forefront of everything you do is vital to staying in business. While making money is nice, you can’t forget why you ultimately started your business.

Listen to and use feedback from your followers, especially as ChatGPT features improve and grow. This can create new opportunities for you and your business. You can’t be everything to everyone, but paying attention to the feedback of those who use your service is vital to maintaining a healthy customer base.

FAQs

Bottom line

Using AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to make money online is possible and, depending on your skills and the time and energy you’re willing to invest, it may be quite lucrative.

Although you don’t need much money to start a business, it can take time and effort, especially if you learn a new skill while building your customer base. Using ChatGPT or AI tools to brainstorm the development of your business or generate content can be a great way to harness new technology to help you save time and effort.