Monetizing AI skills

Storytellers and creators - how can AI help us make money?

Author

Nejc Susec
April 16, 2024

Hello Friend

Today’s post will be a bit personal. It’s my birthday when I write this. A time of reflection for me.

And there is a part of this reflection I would like to share with you as I believe it could be valuable insight for you.

Before we get into it, a few things:

I put a 70% discount on all of my digital products for the next week. It’s a celebration for me and I like to share the good vibes with people. ☀️

You can use the code “ThankYou” at checkout for any of the products.

Our group has been growing nicely - we’re at almost 80 people at the moment. It’s great to see people interacting and sharing.

Here are a few topics from last week:

  • "Multi-Candidate Needle Prompting" for large context LLMs

  • CheatSheet: Beginners Guide to Photorealistic Images with Midjourney

  • AI music with Stable Audio 2

If you want to join the conversation and stay ahead, we would love to see you join. 🤗

Now, let’s get into today’s topic - Monetizing AI skills.

We’re all learning new skills for one reason or another.

  • To create something we couldn’t before

  • To explore and have fun

  • To leverage and upsell in new projects

  • To stay relevant and move forward….

It can be a personal experience, a professional one or a combination of both.

I want to share my experience with how I have monetized my AI knowledge so far. Not to say this is the way you should do it, but to inspire and show possibilities.

I have had many conversations around this topic and I hope this will shed some light on it.

Let’s start with

Creative Work

As creatives, learning AI allows us to deliver work quicker, with higher quality and explore new mediums and formats of creating.

Since acquiring AI skill and knowledge, I’ve worked on several creative projects - social media posts, banners, image content, video content, storyboards, concept designs, story design…

This path largely depends on our existing knowledge and experience. We need to know how to create a good video, how to create a good graphic. AI serves as a new brush, a tool that can help us create what we already know.

Power lies in the speed and scale of this tool. We can move quickly, explore a lot of ideas, create deeper connections, leveraging our experience and focus on the highest quality output.

Something to note here - don’t undersell yourself.

Just because we can create quickly and at scale, it doesn’t mean it will be a quality output. People who don’t know how to make a graphic need to understand that without our previous experience, the quality drops significantly.

You have value. Stick to it and communicate accordingly.

Here is an example of how AI boosts and does not replace it.

Education

A lot of my work comes from education. This newsletter is a part of it.

I love to inspire and empower people. I see the potential of technology combined with human creativity. Every time I do a masterclass, a workshop or an individual session, still after two years, I see minds blown and doors opening in front of my eyes.

For me, this is an incredibly rewarding feeling. When I see the understanding inside a person’s eyes: “I can put the ideas inside my head, out. Wow.”

Here, monetization comes from a few possibilities.

Firstly it’s workshops and trainings.

I go into companies, design a training, deliver the training. Sometimes by myself, sometimes with partners.

Secondly are masterclasses. Again, these are done by myself or together with other people.

I have been working with MIAT academy on high level masterclasses, which have been absolutely fantastic. A very personal learning experience.

Difference with corporate training is the delivery and structure. Masterclasses are meant for individuals, designing such a class hangs on me making the decisions on what is important for you to learn. With corporate, it’s usually very tailored for their use cases and needs. Which are important to understand and often takes time to clarify. 😁

Third are individual sessions. I’ve been enjoying these the most recently. Having a personal, 1 on 1 conversation. Guiding you through what you’re most interested in and helping you reach the goals. I love connecting with people. ☀️

On this topic - If you’re interested in guidance and coaching on your journey, send me a message. I would love to engage in person. 🤗

Consultations

Final one are consultations.

These are also fantastic. Here, having deep understanding of AI is important.

The questions become:

  • How can we use this new technology to create “this”?

  • How can we connect this idea that we have with this technology?

  • How can we go from this input, to this output?

I’ve consulted on a few projects around building AI apps. My role is often to connect the artistic and creative part with the technological part.

An example is a Coca-Cola campaign from August last year. The goal was having input from users and transforming it into the art direction decided by the production team.

What happens in between? That’s for me (and the developers) to figure out.

To summarize

There are many ways you can use your AI skills to your (monetary) advantage.

  • You can create something for someone.

  • You can teach something you know to someone who doesn’t.

  • You can connect the dots with the knowledge you have. The technical and creative.

These are of course not the only ways you can leverage your skills. They are the most common ones I have seen from my own experience and experience of others.

I hope this post has created some purpose and inspiration. A feeling that learning AI can be and will be beneficial for your work.

I would love to see you in our group, where we further discuss these topics. Sharing is the way for everyone to grow. And there is a lot to share when it comes to AI.

Keep creating and always remember to have fun. ☀️