5 Boring But Easy Claude AI Side Hustles That Can Pay a Full-time Income
Watch on YouTubeVideo summary
The video introduces five accessible side hustles that leverage AI, specifically Claude, to generate full-time income without requiring degrees, prior experience, or startup capital. The first opportunity discussed is professional genealogy research, a field where rates can exceed $200 per hour despite the availability of automated DNA kits. While companies like Ancestry provide data points, clients pay for human storytellers who can weave those facts into compelling family histories. The presenter explains how Claude acts as a powerful coworker in this process by transcribing old handwriting, building timelines, flagging conflicting dates, and drafting story chapters, allowing individuals to verify sources and publish books that deliver immense value to families without needing a history degree.
The second and third ideas focus on selling AI prompts and providing AI bookkeeping services. For prompt selling, the video highlights that businesses are willing to pay significant sums for carefully curated instructions that help Claude produce professional-grade work in specific niches like real estate or finance. The presenter shares an example of creating a prompt that reduced a realtor's document preparation time from two hours to ten minutes, demonstrating how existing expertise combined with AI can solve expensive problems. Similarly, the third hustle involves AI bookkeeping, a sector facing a shortage of human accountants who have left the profession. Since bookkeeping does not require a CPA license, individuals can use Claude to clean data, write formulas, and build financial models for small businesses, effectively acting as an intelligent overseer that ensures accuracy while saving clients time and money.
The final two opportunities involve becoming an AI Excel consultant and an AI thumbnail designer. As an Excel consultant, one can fix broken spreadsheets or train others on using AI within spreadsheet software, a role that still requires human judgment to oversee the AI's output and optimize results. The fifth hustle is designing YouTube thumbnails, where the key skill is not just generating images but possessing the "taste" to understand what makes a thumbnail effective for high click-through rates. By feeding Claude data on competitor thumbnails, users can generate concept briefs and layouts that are then rendered into final images. The video concludes by emphasizing that while these methods may seem boring to others, they represent low-competition lanes where value-driven work leads to financial freedom, and it encourages viewers to utilize the provided live training links to learn the specific workflows for implementing these strategies.
Read the full video transcript
These are five boring but easy cloud AAI
side hustles that can pay a full-time
income. And I promise at least one of
them is going to be a good fit for you.
Now, there's no degree needed for any of
these. There's no experience needed for
pretty much all of them. There's no
product, no inventory, or no startup
money. And a few of them pay more than
the average doctor's salary. Now, I paid
$300,000 in student loans to find out
that my doctorate was the slow way to
make money. So, I built the channel that
I wish I had when I was first starting
my career. And over a thousand people in
my communities have used this stuff to
change their income forever. So exciting
hustles are crowded and a lot of the
boring hustles are empty and Claude just
made boring easy. So maybe you're stuck
in a job that you hate. Maybe the layoff
email already came. Or maybe you're
retired and the math stopped working. Or
maybe you're home with kids all day and
you want to make money on the side. No
matter what situation you're in, there's
going to be an option in this video with
your name on it. So every number in this
video comes with a name. I'm also going
to be showing examples and receipts in
this video as well. And one of these I
would genuinely do myself and it's going
to be near the end. And for every single
one of these, I'll show you exactly how
to run them inside of Claude. So if you
appreciate me making this type of
content, you want to see me make more of
it in the future, then let me know by
gently cheersing that like button. And
let's jump into it right now. All right.
So the Association of Professional
Genealogologists says that rates run
from 30 an hour to well over $200 an
hour for family history researchers. So
$200 an hour for homework about grandma.
Okay, Shane, but who pays for that when
Ancestry.com exists? Millions of people.
And there's even a hit TV franchise,
Finding Your Roots, built on celebrities
paying professional genealogologists.
And Ancestry's compilation of the
wildest reveals has over 4.9 million
views. So, the DNA kit hands you the
dots, but people pay the human for the
story. Sure, Shane, but hourly gigs
aren't going to pay a full-time income.
Well, Legacy Tree, one of the biggest
firms in the space, bills from $108 an
hour in packages of 25 to 100 hours.
That's 2,700 to five figure invoice for
one family. All right, Shane, but don't
you need a history degree to do this?
Nope, not at all. No license or
certification exists anywhere. Working
genealogologists say that the finished
research is the credential. And there's
even videos on YouTube of exactly how to
start as a genealogologist. I will be
discussing how to become a professional
genealogologist. So, let's talk about
how to get started doing this with
Claude. Open one Claude project per
family. Upload census pages, immigration
records, and grandma's letters. Or you
can actually have Claude just go and
look at those for you, especially if it
has access to the database. And then
Claude can transcribe the old
handwriting. It can build the timeline.
It can flag conflicting dates, and it
can write the family story chapter by
chapter. So, a working professional
genealogologist publishes this exact
workflow, and she calls Claude her
coworker. So, you verify the source,
print the book, and hand a family their
history. And for a lot of you, you might
be thinking that this sounds really
boring. And for a lot of people, it is.
But boring lanes are empty lanes, and
there's billions in the boring. In fact,
most people who become millionaires or
billionaires are doing it with boring
businesses that probably started off as
boring side hustles as well. So, one
piece of advice that I always like to
give people is find something that's
boring to other people and seems like
work to them, but it seems like fun for
you. So, if this type of thing is fun
for you, then this could be a really
good option. And additionally, I
wouldn't really be hyperfocusing on fun
because the truth is even if something
is really fun, if you do it enough,
you're going to get tired of it. And so,
what you really want to focus on is
things that are helpful to other people,
right? Things that give value to other
people because that's always going to
feel good whether you've done it one
time or a thousand times. All right,
YouTube just got 10 times easier and
nobody is talking about it. You used to
need an entire film crew. And it used to
be a full-time job for you to just do
any work at all on YouTube, but now you
can get work done in as little as 15 to
30 minutes a day, and you can actually
grow a fulltime YouTube channel. That's
exactly what I'm going to be talking
about at the live training that we're
doing this week. Exactly how to grow
your YouTube channel. So, click the link
in the description in the pin comment
below to check that out, guys. I will be
answering questions before, during, and
after the live training. It's completely
free. Plus, I'll be giving away an AI
that is designed to help you pick your
niche if you don't have one in the first
place or if you already have a niche.
It's going to help you make it 10 times
better. So, really looking forward to
talking with you guys. This is stuff
that we never talked about before. So,
click that link in the description below
and I look forward to seeing you there.
All right, number two is going to be a
prompt seller. So, next one is selling
AI prompts and these are the tested
instructions that make Claude produce
professional-grade work. So, people are
getting paid a lot of money to write
carefully curated sentences. And Prompt
Base has over 2340 clawed prompts listed
for sale right now, and sellers keep 80%
of every sale. But you might be
thinking, "Well, okay, Shane, but
selling $5 sentences is just beer
money." Well, the sentences are the
bottom run. CBS News reported Anthropic,
the company that makes Claude,
advertised prompt engineer roles paying
up to $335,000 a year. And CNBC covered
an art history PhD with zero tech
background earning over $100,000 a year
doing this. So 335,000 a year just for
writing instructions in English and
somebody who had zero technical
background getting into this job and
making six figures as well. But you may
be thinking, "Well, Shane, I bet it's
super hard to become a prompt expert."
Well, there are a lot of videos on
YouTube that teach you how to prompt
like a pro. Like this video from Daryl
Wilson, who teaches people how to prompt
like a pro with Claude in just 5
minutes. And even Anthropic itself made
a video about how to prompt properly so
that people can learn. Now, let's talk
about how to do this with cloud. Pick
one niche that you already know well,
right? One skill or one niche or one
industry, etc. that you've already spent
a lot of time doing or you know it
really well. So, we're talking it could
be your job, right? Maybe you're an
accountant or maybe you're a data
analyst or maybe you work in finance,
etc., etc. Or it could be the industry
you're in. For instance, maybe you're a
realtor, so you work in real estate. Or
it could be a skill that you're very
good at, like you're really good at
using Excel or Google Sheets. So, just
pick one niche you know and then have
Claude build and stress test at least 10
to 20 prompts that solve that niche's
expensive problems. So, just as an
example, I was helping my sister-in-law
who's a very experienced realtor just a
couple months back. And basically,
there's certain documents that she has
to fill out every single time she sells
a house. And it is very tedious to fill
these documents out. It usually takes
her 2 hours and she's done a lot of
them. And that's just for one document.
She typically has to do several of them
when she sells a house. And so I worked
with her for a very short period of
time, even though I don't really know
much at all about real estate. And we
were able to come up with a prompt that
took that 2hour timeline down to 5 to 10
minutes. And this immediately saves her
a massive amount of time, effort, and
money. But the only way that I was able
to help her do that is because of the
fact that she was an expert. And then I
showed her how to properly prompt Claude
and we worked together to make it
happen. Right? So the experience that
you already have, you can just use that
to give feedback to Claude and just tell
it what you want and you can literally
just talk to it. And then once you
figure out how to do it with Claude, you
can have a prompt that helps other
people do the same exact thing. Now
prompts are just the beginning. And of
course, you can post on something like
prompt base where you can keep 80%. But
some things are a little bit too
complicated for just a single prompt to
be able to solve. And so in that case,
you might need to set up a claude
project or you might need to make a
claude skill or something even more
complicated than that. And in many
cases, you can charge $500 to $2,000 for
a build, and that is honestly on the
lower side. So, sentences used to be
free, then they started running
companies. Now, those first two might
sound a little bit exotic, but this next
one is pure, uncut, boring, and it
absolutely prints money. AI bookkeeping.
Every business in America is legally
required to keep clean books, and you're
the person who keeps them for a monthly
fee. Now, Fortune reported that more
than 300,000 accountants left the
profession in the span of about 3 years.
And accounting today says 90% of CFOs
already outsource some of their
accounting. So the work didn't leave,
the workers did. And here's the most
important sentence in this video. Boring
makes money because boring has no
competition. Nobody is fighting you to
do the books for the plumber down the
street. Okay, Shane, but don't you have
to get a college degree and become a
CPA? You don't. Bookkeeping needs no
license, and the CPAs will even teach
you. Two licensed CPAs at Life
Accounting posted a 2-hour beginner
bookkeeping tutorial that has around
171,000 views. So 171,000 people watched
a 2hour video about bookkeeping. That's
demand with nobody standing in front of
it. But you might be thinking, "All
right, Shane, but a few hundred bucks a
client is pocket change." Well, there's
a bookkeeper on YouTube named
Pascarelloo who documented how he's
managing 87 clients and collecting
$47,62
every single month. It's about $547 per
client recurring revenue. And by the
way, he was self-taught. And if you want
to be more specific on this, you can
just do QuickBooks alone, right? And
there are people who teach QuickBooks on
YouTube, just like Hector Garcia, CPA,
who teaches people how to use
QuickBooks. He has a video where he had
a complete tutorial on how to use
QuickBooks, and it got 2 million views.
And by the way, just from that video
alone, it made about $10,200 in AdSense
revenue. And that's not accounting the
affiliate income he's getting from
QuickBooks itself. Because whenever
somebody clicks on his link, you see how
it says partner right there on the
screen. Yeah. If they click on the link
and they end up buying, he gets a
percentage of that affiliate income and
that is likely a lot of money. So, you
must have noticed by now that there are
lots of people doing this side hustle,
they're also filming it and getting more
money doing it. So, basically, you can
market your side hustle using YouTube
and you get paid doing that. How awesome
does that sound? Because no other
platforms are going to pay you like this
to market your side hustles, only
YouTube. And YouTube is literally the
number one most sought-after career when
they surveyed people and asked them what
they want to be, right? And it doesn't
even have to be bookkeeping, right? It
could be any side hustle that you have.
Just like Nurse Jen, who was a burntout
teleahalth nurse who just wanted to have
a side income while working as a nurse.
And when she first started, she had no
idea how to start YouTube. And in her
own words, she said, "I hadn't dipped my
toe into YouTube yet." But since nurse
Jen followed everything we told her
inside the program, she got monetized
quickly. In her first month being
monetized, she made $6,000 in a single
month. then 8,000 the following month
and then quickly it went up to 10.5,000
in a single month just from AdSense
alone.
>> First month was right around 6,000, the
second month was right around 8,000.
This month will be right around 10,000.
>> And she's making more than just the
AdSense money. She just closed a deal
where she's getting paid $800 per video
plus affiliate income for sponsoring a
product that she really likes. Anyways,
and the best part is she was able to
quit her job and she just travels around
the country with her camper van thanks
to us. And by the way, she's recording
her videos in the back of her camper
van. So, she's able to achieve true
financial location and time freedom
because of this YouTube system that we
taught her. And speaking of a beginner
who doesn't know anything about YouTube,
my brother, who has no experience with
YouTube, got success within a month of
starting with YouTube. And for context,
my brother has been in the trades for
almost 30 years. And that work was
taking a real toll on his body. It's
exactly what made him pull me aside
while we were on a family vacation. And
he told me that he wanted to stop
working in the trades because his body
just couldn't keep taking it. but he
still needed to make money. And he was
expecting you to tell him about online
jobs and side hustles. But I told him,
"Just do YouTube, bro." And he was like,
"Oh, no. I can't do it. I'm in my 50s.
No one wants to listen to a 50-year-old.
YouTube is for dancing kids doing
pranks. I'm not tech-savvy. I don't even
know how to set up a camera. I haven't
recorded a single video in my life." And
he gave me every excuse in the book. But
I told him, "Bro, just trust me. Follow
every single thing that I say and you'll
succeed." And he did listen to me. And
the channel he started is about the most
boring topic imaginable, teaching people
how to get into the trades. and his very
first video blew up and got 800,000 plus
views. And within 29 days of uploading
that video, he was monetized and he made
$214 in a single day. And that's a
$78,000 year run rate. And to end his
first year on YouTube, he pulled $18,000
in a single month. Now, if you are a
complete beginner and you want to use
YouTube as your side hustle just like
Nurse Jin and my brother Zach, then join
me on a live training that I'm going to
be doing this week by clicking the link
in the description in the pin comment
below where I will be showing you how to
grow and make money with YouTube. And
for people who attend this live
training, they will get the niche
validator pro that helps them find a
niche if they don't have one or if they
already have a niche, helps them make it
10 times better. And this is a niche
that's going to be perfectly designed
for you. Plus, you get to ask me any
questions that you have in mind about
the live on Zoom. So, I look forward to
seeing you there. I'll be answering
questions before, during, and after. So,
click the link in the description in the
pen comment below. And also, don't
forget to add it to your calendar. And
since we mentioned Excel, let's talk
about the next side hustle on the list,
which is an Excel consultant. Because
boring has a big brother, spreadsheets.
So, the next one is being an AI Excel
consultant. So, businesses pay outside
people to fix the broken spreadsheets
that they run on, or they pay outside
people to train their people how to use
spreadsheets better. And they'll pay
outside people to train people how to
use AI and spreadsheets together. But
you might be thinking, "Okay, Shane, but
who's going to pay a stranger to fix a
spreadsheet?" Uh, a lot of people,
right? Enough people that a guy named
Chandu made $100,000 freelancing in
Excel and his video about it has over
744,000 views. So 744,000 people watched
a spreadsheet guy explain his money. All
right, Shane, but I can barely do a
lookup. That requirement just died.
Anthropic launched Claude for Excel, and
a finance educator named Kenji tested it
on camera, turning Apple's annual report
into a full financial model. Sure, but
if Claude exists inside Excel, why would
anyone hire me? Because the client
doesn't know what to ask for. and a
working fractional CFO fed Claude his
real client model, had it build the
dashboards, and he still needs to
optimize it to ask the right questions
and stuff like that. So, just to be very
clear, AI is incredibly useful, but it
almost always still needs an intelligent
human being to oversee it, to make sure
that everything is just right. So, it's
kind of like having a vehicle versus
walking. A vehicle is incredibly useful,
much, much better than walking, much
better than even having a bicycle,
especially if it's a long distance. But
you still need somebody who knows how to
drive it, right? That is what AI is
right now. So let's talk about how to do
this with Claude. Install Claude for
Excel and take the jobs that nobody
wants, the broken budget sheet, the
dashboard that doesn't exist yet. Claude
can clean the data, write the formulas,
and build the model while citing every
single cell that it touched. And you
sanity check the numbers and invoice per
project, not per hour. And then save
each job type as a Cloud skill so that
the next time you do it, it doesn't take
you nearly as long. So job 10 is going
to take a tenth of time of job number
one. And this is the whole game in one
sentence. You bring the hustle, Claude
brings the skills. And typically, if you
save it as a skill, each skill you can
just reuse, and then just modify it very
slightly for each situation. All right,
next is going to be using Claude to
become a thumbnail designer. Office
Software isn't the only place hiring.
The creator economy pays as well. And
next up is an AI thumbnail designer.
Now, YouTube pays real money, especially
for that little picture that you click
on because that picture decides
everything. And if you don't believe me,
just ask Mr. Beast. Social Media Today
reported that Mr. Beast pays around
$10,000 per thumbnail. $10,000 for one
image because that's how important the
thumbnail is. But you might be thinking,
"Okay, Shane, well that's Mr. Beast.
Normal channels pay coffee money." Well,
Dil Toma shows that he makes $10,000 a
month creating YouTube thumbnails. Now,
you might see people saying that they
had Claude just automate the thumbnail
designing completely. But if you don't
know what a good thumbnail is, then it
doesn't matter how good Claude is
because you're not going to know which
thumbnail to pick that's actually good,
right? It's kind of like if you don't
know what good writing looks like, you
won't know if Claude's doing a good job
writing. So, the rendering was never the
job. The taste is the job. And the
designers running AI are the ones
charging $1,000 for a thumbnail. So,
feed Claude a channel's niche and its
best 10 performing competitor
thumbnails. and Claude can break down
why they win and write five concept
briefs, layout, emotion, and three-word
overlay text, and you just render it in
your image tool and deliver two versions
for testing. But keep in mind that if
you don't know what a good thumbnail is,
then it doesn't matter how good Claude
is making it. But with that being said,
there's a reason people are paying so
much for thumbnails, and that's because
YouTube is such an incredible
opportunity. So, there's so many
different ways to make money on YouTube.
Obviously, you could make money with
thumbnails, but you could also start a
YouTube agency. So, an example of that
is our client Juan. once started a
YouTube agency and he makes six figures
a year helping other people make YouTube
videos. And he said that he rated
working with us 10 out of 10. And he
learned a lot from our processes that we
teach, both in terms of his own YouTube
channel, which he uses to get clients,
but also in terms of making his YouTube
agency more effective and efficient when
it comes to helping his clients get
results.
>> Shane's team, it's just top-notch.
Everyone on the team is truly like
amazing, very helpful, very responsive.
So, I mean, overall, I'll give it a 10
out of 10. And there's just so much
opportunity when it comes to posting on
YouTube, especially if you're someone
who already has existing skill set. Like
you already have skills, you already
have expertise, and you just want to
share your skills with other people.
YouTube is incredible for that. Now,
with that being said, I know that 99% of
you out there are just going to consume
my free content, right? The content on
YouTube, my free downloads, my free live
trainings, you're going to get a ton of
value out of it, and we're never going
to end up working together. And that's
completely fine. But there's going to be
1% of you out there, even 0.1% of you
out there that want to get results as
fast as possible, right? You want to
skip the line. You want to do it with
the least amount of time, effort, and
money. And if that sounds like you, then
go ahead and click the second link in
the description in the pin comment below
to book a call with myself or my team.
On this call, we'll figure out where you
are right now, where you want to be.
We'll make a plan to get there. We'll
see if we're a good fit to work together
or not. You're going to be applying for
either one-on-one mentorship or
literally done for you work if you want
us to just do the work for you. We have
the best people in the world on our team
and it is very expensive to actually
carry out this one-on-one work. So, only
apply if you're very serious about
growing and making money on YouTube. We
only accept about 18% of people who
apply and is a very exclusive group and
we curate it to make sure that there's
only people that are very likely to get
success. But with that being said, you
can absolutely just enjoy the free stuff
and get a lot of value out of that. And
I highly recommend that you attend the
live training to get a taste of what
it's like to work with us. With that
being said, check out this video right
here to see exactly how we helped my
brother Zach go from zero to a full-time
income in less than 1 month. And click
right here to check that out right now.