5 Untapped Ways to Make Money with AI (That Actually Work)

After spending digging through endless resources, it became painfully clear that most advice on making money with AI is either recycled fluff or simply too complex to be useful for everyday people.

You’ll hear the same old suggestions—start a faceless YouTube channel, write AI-generated blogs that nobody reads, or create a hyper-complicated AI chatbot you don’t even care about. But what if I told you there are smarter, lesser-known ways to generate income using AI right now?

I’ve found five innovative, unsaturated ways that people are actually making money with AI today—and you don’t need to be a tech genius or even have prior experience to get started. These methods are practical, scalable, and in some cases, can become passive income streams over time. Let’s dive in.

1. Create and Sell AI-Generated Presentations

Designing presentations is one of the most time-consuming tasks for professionals, but tools like Gamma.app have flipped the script. With Gamma, you can create sleek, professional presentations in minutes using AI. Raul, a first-time freelancer, found a $50 gig on Freelancer.com to redesign a PowerPoint presentation. He used Gamma, picked a template, uploaded the content, tweaked it slightly, and delivered the final product—all in 10 minutes.

If you think $50 for 10 minutes of work sounds good, listen to this: On Upwork, there are gigs paying as much as $500 to revamp investor decks. These types of clients often have money to spend but limited design skills, making them ideal candidates for this kind of service.

To scale this side hustle:

• Start on platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, or Fiverr.
• Use Gamma to streamline your workflow.
• Deliver high-quality work and collect positive reviews.
• Build a client base for recurring work.

2. Make Custom Music Using AI

If creating music without any musical skills sounds like science fiction, meet Tuna AI (or similar platforms like Mubert or Boomy). This tool allows you to generate music from a simple text prompt. Combine it with ChatGPT to generate lyrics, and you can produce full songs in just a few steps.

Imagine this: You prompt ChatGPT to write a song about subscribing to your YouTube channel, copy the lyrics into Tuna, and boom—you have a catchy, fully original track. It’s copyright-free, uniquely yours, and ready to sell.

Here’s how to monetize it:

• Podcasters need intros/outros.
• YouTubers are always on the lookout for royalty-free background music.
• Businesses want custom jingles to reinforce their brand identity.

You can find gigs paying $200 or more for just an intro/outro. Take it a step further: identify podcasts or YouTube channels with weak intros, create a better version using Tuna, and send them a sample. If they like it, they’ll likely pay you—and possibly hire you for more.

3. Run AI-Powered Ad Campaigns for Businesses

Paid advertising is a huge revenue generator for businesses, but many of them struggle to run successful ad campaigns. Crafting compelling ad copy, selecting the right visuals, and testing performance are tasks that overwhelm many small business owners.

That’s where AdCreative.ai steps in. This AI tool can create high-converting ad images, headlines, and descriptions tailored to your client’s product or industry—all you need is a photo. Within minutes, you can build a professional ad campaign.

To make this profitable:

• Offer ad creation services to small businesses.
• Start by offering your service for free to a few clients.
• Let the results speak for themselves—if they get more leads, they’ll keep coming back.

This is one of the most scalable services you can offer. With enough happy clients, you can even turn it into a full-fledged agency model.

4. Write Podcast Show Notes with AI

Podcasting is booming, with over 3.5 million active shows. Yet many podcasters struggle with writing compelling show notes, timestamps, and SEO-optimized summaries. With Melville AI, this tedious task can be completed in minutes.

Here’s what you do:

• Feed the podcast episode into Melville.
• Let it generate the transcript, summary, and timestamps.
• Clean it up slightly for clarity and formatting.
• Deliver a polished show notes package.

On platforms like Upwork, freelancers are charging between $25 and $55 per hour for this exact work. But here’s the real hack: Don’t wait for clients to find you. Instead, target monetized podcasts with sponsorships and offer to do one episode for free. If they see value, they’ll likely hire you.

This approach works because it removes friction. No need to pitch blindly. Just serve first and let your work do the talking. It’s exactly how many freelancers land long-term contracts.

5. Passive Income with Affiliate Marketing for AI Tools

If you’re looking for a more hands-off approach to monetizing your AI knowledge, affiliate marketing is your answer. Matt from Future Tools built a website that categorizes AI tools and earns thousands in commissions monthly when users sign up through his affiliate links. The secret sauce? Creating helpful content that drives traffic.

You can replicate this success using YouTube:

• Pick AI tools with affiliate programs (search “AI affiliate programs” on Google).
• Create tutorials or reviews showing how the tools work.
• Include your unique affiliate link in the video description.
• Ask the company for a discount code to make your link more appealing.

Even small creators can win. For example, a YouTuber with only 800 subscribers managed to get over 3,000 views on a tutorial about an AI writing tool. People actively search for tool comparisons, reviews, and tutorials. Use YouTube’s auto-suggest feature to find trending queries around the tool you’re reviewing.

The more helpful and detailed your tutorial, the higher it ranks, and the more traffic you generate. One good video can bring in recurring commissions for months—or even years.

Final Thoughts

The AI revolution is real, but the window to be early is closing fast. What sets these five ideas apart is that they are still relatively unknown or underutilized. Whether you’re creating presentations, composing music, managing ads, writing podcast notes, or doing affiliate marketing, each strategy is practical, profitable, and powered by AI tools that do most of the work for you.

What’s even better is that many of these approaches can be started with little or no upfront investment—just your time and willingness to learn a new tool.

If you’re ready to move beyond the generic advice that floods the internet and actually take action, start exploring one of these methods today. Choose the one that aligns with your skills or interests and dive in.

And if you’ve read this far, I’d love to know—which of these ideas are you most excited to try? Drop a comment and share your thoughts!