5 Ways To Make Money With AI Automation in 2026 (For Beginners)

Realistic Expectations for AI Automation

A lot of people when they hear AI automation, they immediately think AI automation agency or “I’m gonna buy myself a yacht when I just do this for like two to four months” or “this is going to be so easy that you can just get thousands of dollars the next week,” which is totally not true.

This is work just like any other one. And if you have patience to learn, if you have some passion to learn, you are eventually going to get to a place where you will be satisfied with the income that it can get you. But in no way or shape this is going to be a get-rich-quick scheme or you’re going to be a millionaire out of it.

Starting from Ground Zero

There are people who got millions with this but those are the people that were the first and those are the people that have huge companies like for example Scale AI. Scale AI is an automation agency, actually it’s a big huge company and Meta acquired like 49% of it. You have to go from ground zero if that’s your starting point. First of all, the first tool that you can use is called Zapier and this is the one that is useful whenever you want to make certain workflows. Zapier is simple, user intuitive, and beginner friendly.

The Power of Zapier

As you can see, you can build AI workflows. Then you can proceed to chatbots because this is more simple. This is AI agent. But these two in a combination, workflows and chatbots, with this you can learn a lot and on top of that you can earn money from it because it’s in demand. A lot of people want to automate things — even your local bakery wants to automate something.

They want to automate bread, flower shops. They want to automate new flowers coming onto the website whenever they have new flowers. So yeah, it’s in demand. And for example, you can even get a job on Fiverr or Upwork. You don’t even have to start with your own website. And that’s what most people think — that they just have to have a new website, a new Instagram profile. Just have a look at Zapier workflow. Just for this it has its own niche.

High Demand for Simple Automation

Zapier workflow — as you can see, Make is one more which you can use. They’re kind of similar but here for this one, this person is making one basic workflow with one to two steps. Now this means trigger and action. So, for example, if something is typed in Slack, let it go to a Google doc or Excel sheet. That’s it. Basic workflow. It’s $65. And this person already has a lot of reviews here, at least 50 completed orders.

Earning Money on Freelance Platforms

Fiverr clients don’t leave reviews every time, but he’s not the only one. There’s a lot of people doing it and of course there’s a lot of people making money with it. There’s also a person underpricing this, but he is just fixing issues on Zapier for $30 each. Another person works with Zapier integrations — one existing Zap issue, no new builds, $60. So yeah, it is in demand and that is why these people can charge so much and you can do the same.

Addressing Local Business Needs

If you learn the process of how to work with Zapier, you’ll see how big only workflows are because it actually is significant. And the truth is not everybody needs an agent. If you just go through your local area and ask people around what they need, well, they just need one or two or five things automated. They don’t need an entire agent to build out something for them to go and scour the internet.

They need simple things automated. And Zapier or Make do those things. If you learn that, you can grab yourself a really good side hustle at first, but later on, well, it can be your full-time job if this is your passion.

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Transitioning to Chatbots

The second thing is chatbots. Chatbots are a bit more complicated, but if you do enough workflows and if you do enough research, well, you’re going to be ready for chatbots as well because that’s what most of these people did — workflows first, then they just went over to chatbots. And chatbots are also a pretty good opportunity.

What’s good with chatbots is that usually you can upsell your services because sometimes clients just want to add some new things inside of their chatbot. For example, sticking to that flower shop — if they add new flowers, well, they’re just going to come back to update the chatbot and they want that version to include the new flower.

And that is something that you can make with Make and Zapier. You don’t have to have a lot of knowledge. You don’t have to have a lot of coding experience. You don’t even have to have any coding experience if you want to use Zapier.

Learning Without Coding Experience

The first workflows can be made just by using YouTube and of course investing some time into playing with Zapier because there’s a lot of people that can show you some really simple things. In 20 minutes you can just get yourself certain knowledge which can get you started, and then of course you’re going to play with it a lot.

You’re going to try out different things and with experience and some time invested, you’re going to get better and you can then sell these things. And Fiverr is not the only place. There’s also Upwork. You can just search for chatbots or Zapier integrations, workflows, whatever. There’s a lot of people here. The best way is going to be to market yourself on both of these platforms.

Marketing and Upscaling Your Services

On top of that, maybe make an Instagram profile or whatever you want to use just to showcase yourself. Just show the last workflows that you made so people can see that you’re active and that you have something to show. Simple as that. And only then you are going to be ready for AI agents.

When you make your first AI agent, that’s going to be one year from now. Maybe if you’re talented, maybe it’s going to be before that. But as you can see, some of these go for $1,500. That’s why at the beginning it’s important not to think you’re going to be ready to make AI agents the next week.

Exploring New Tools for Conversational AI

It’s not going to happen. That’s why these people can charge this amount of money — because there’s not a lot of people that can make this. So that is something that you should have in mind. This is going to be a long journey ahead and it requires work and diligence and dedication. There are a lot of tools for AI agents such as Manis, but 11 Labs — a tool for voice, for text-to-speech software — has also moved into this space with conversational AI.

Creating Agents Step by Step

From the dashboard, there are two platforms — one is a creative platform for audio and the other one is conversational AI. Here you can create agents. If you click on agents, you can see new agent. Click on it and then you can see personal assistant or business agent. There’s a lot of things here as well. It’s a new thing, but the right approach is to start with your first workflow first and then consider upscaling. Remember, step by step, it is possible, but work on it.

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