Transcription
So, right now, most experts seem to agree AI is looking a lot like a stock market bubble, and it might burst very soon. But you know what? Just because the AI bubble might be about to pop doesn't mean you can't make a lot of money from it. And that is exactly what I plan to do. I have a five-step plan I'm following to make a ton of money from it.
Because historically, stock market bubbles have actually been one of the best times to profit. But importantly, not for investments. [music] Instead, the way that you make money is from making smart business plays. Which is why in step one of my plan, I'm going all-in on AI, despite the fact that it might be a bubble.
Yeah, if we look back at previous bubbles, the correct money play is clear. Now is the time to be learning AI and using it to build an AI-powered business. Because you see, this is looking more and more similar every day to the dot-com bubble during the late '90s. And well, back in the '90s, when the internet first started taking off, a lot of people looked at this new technology and thought, "Huh, this could completely change and revolutionize the world." So investors around the world spent trillions of dollars investing into infrastructure updates. In the USA, over $500 billion dollars was spent installing miles of optic cables to connect everyone to the internet, which of course looks very similar to today, doesn't it? With investors looking to spend trillions of dollars on data centers.
And back then, a lot of companies popped up trying to take advantage of this new technology, the internet. And many were operating at a loss, offering free services in exchange for gaining market share, which again looks a lot like the AI companies today, such as OpenAI with ChatGPT, losing money every day by giving their services away for free. They are surviving entirely off of investor money. And at least during the dot-com boom, this proved to be unsustainable. Eventually, the investor money dried up, and the stock market back in the '90s crashed.
But here's the thing, it didn't matter because by that point, the cables had already been laid. And so those early infrastructure investments made during the bubble in the '90s had already supercharged the internet. And in the 25 years since, the digital economy has gone from being 0.01% of the world's GDP to over 15%. And so it turned out that the crash wasn't the end for this new technology called the internet. It was actually just the beginning. And it looks like we're in a very similar space now. This boom has funded large-scale data centers that will be going live as early as this year. And these data centers will also supercharge AI. So whether the bubble actually pops or not anytime soon, I don't really think matters. A crash wouldn't be the end. It would be the start, just before takeoff.
So, this of course begs the question, "Okay, Sarah, what are you doing as part of your five-step plan to take advantage of this?" And I'll tell you, I am not waiting. I am learning to integrate AI. Now, as my longtime subscribers know from my video case studies, for years, I've had a print-on-demand business where I create niche clothing designs that I upload onto print-on-demand products like shirts that people can give as gifts, which I list and sell on platforms like Etsy for a profit. And I used to create and market my clothes myself, but that has actually all changed in real time. I've been posting videos of my new workflows where I'm learning how to integrate AI to do this for me.
But I'm sure a lot of people are thinking, "Well, Sarah, what if I don't have a business to integrate AI into already like you did? What sort of business should I start to take advantage of this moment?" And that's a good question. And it leads me on to step two of my plan, which is this: I'm also going all-in on another opportunity called GEO. So GEO, if you've never heard of it before, is an acronym for a marketing strategy called Generative Engine Optimization. And personally, I think that this is the most underrated AI opportunity of them all, instead of vibe-coding. Seriously, there are so many videos on YouTube singing the praises of trying to make money using AI by getting it to vibe-code some sort of software startup. But I think that's a bit of a trap, and here is why.
So, this here is an example of GEO, right? If I come to ChatGPT and say to it, "Look, I'm going to Paris and I need to pick a hotel that meets all of these specific requirements. Can you recommend some options for me?" It will do just that. And there is a name for this. These are called AI recommendations. And it isn't just random whether AI chooses to recommend your products or service to its users. Nope. GEO is all about tweaking your business website or your product pages to make it easier for AI to find it, understand it, and therefore more likely to recommend it.
And so, as these new data centers start coming online, supercharging AI, more and more people will use it, and it's going to become the main way people search for things, including content, products, and services online. And there are lots of free tutorials, by the way, on YouTube that teach how to do GEO. But you know what? Despite how important it is to learn this, I bet that most people who are watching this video have never heard of the phrase Generative Engine Optimization before. Nope. And so there is a massive first-mover advantage here for people who watch these tutorials, learn how to do it, and then leverage these skills by opening a business in a GEO-friendly industry. Because that's the thing, not all types of businesses benefit from GEO recommendations. For example, those scrappy vibe-coding startups people are trying to get you to do, AI recommendations are unlikely to ever recommend these to users. These are not GEO-friendly. Whereas these other business ideas over here, these are the sorts that people actually ask AI to help them with. So if you're looking to start a new business to take advantage of this crazy new traffic source, I would be looking to start a business in one of these GEO-friendly industries.
So again, all of this begs the question, "Okay Sarah, what actionable steps are you taking to take advantage of this GEO opportunity?" So obviously, I've picked the niche gift business, and I've been doing two things. Firstly, as I said, I've been selling my products on Etsy. AI tools love online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy, which means they are more likely to recommend them because they trust them. So much so that Etsy is making direct deals with AI companies to integrate in-app shopping. People can ask ChatGPT right now for gifts to buy, and it can recommend items from Etsy to buy like mine, and people can just buy them without leaving the app. And secondly, I've been watching tutorials on GEO and I've developed my own system to optimize my product pages for it, and I have a tutorial on this video here that shows how I do that. And as a result of making these changes, I've seen a big increase in traffic and sales from AI recommendations to my products, which is super cool.
And this then brings me on to step three of my plan, which is to learn at least one skill that AI is bad at. So, look, here's the thing, right? I've had lots of people come into my YouTube comment section and be like, "Aha, that's it. The key to a successful AI business is automation. Get really good at using AI to produce products, services, or content as fast as possible. You do as little as possible. AI does everything. That's the right way. Right? Right?" Wrong. Look, here's the deal. If you rely on AI to do everything for you, then you will have no competitive edge at all. Think about it. Everyone is using those exact same tools, so they can produce everything that you do. You need a competitive edge. And the easiest way to do this in the new AI era is to simply learn a skill that AI is just bad at.
So, one obvious example is that AI does not have a body. It literally can't do in-person relationships and networking. So, if you chose to focus on learning this skill, how to build in-person relationships, you could choose a GEO business from before to start that you can utilize the skill in, such as starting a local marketing agency. Then you and AI can work together as a team. You can use AI to automate the client's services, which frees up your time to network and meet new clients in person. That becomes your edge.
And so for me, I've been focusing on this skill to give me an edge: aesthetic taste. And this skill is actually quite crucial because, sure, AI can generate art and videos for you, but if you run the same prompt through twice, you'll often get two very different pictures. So the question is, which one is the best? Which image will sell better, for example, if you print it onto a t-shirt? [music] Well, that is what aesthetic taste is. It is the subjective skill of being able to stay on top of changing design trends and choose which is aesthetically best. And as this article from Cambridge University explains, AI is actually quite bad at this. And it's because AI makes decisions by looking back at pre-existing training data. And trends change fast, often faster than training data can be gathered. Whereas us humans, we can literally see design trends change in real time with our eyes in our day-to-day lives. This gives us a huge advantage over AI in the skill. And so learning how to spot these design trends has given me a massive edge over my competitors on Etsy who have just chosen to rely on AI to pick which images to use in their designs.
And by the way, if you've been watching this video and you're curious about how my AI print-on-demand store works and how it makes money, don't forget I have a free ebook that you can download in the video description which shares how I build and scale AI print-on-demand businesses. Plus, if you're super curious, I also have my video course, the Ecom Clubhouse, where I share in-depth video tutorials showing my AI tool workflows I'm using right now to do this. And as a bonus for any new readers that sign up for my free ebook today, as a special thank you, I will offer you a bonus one-time coupon that lets you join and access all of my private training videos in the Ecom Club Pass for 7 days for just $1.
But anyway, back to the video and on to step four of my plan, which is to not just build a business around ChatGPT. Seriously, when you pick a GEO-friendly business to start to take advantage of the upcoming AI boom, it's up to you. But I would personally try to avoid building it around just ChatGPT because, you think about it, right? ChatGPT, it was the first publicly released AI, and as a result, it gained a massive first-mover advantage. Look, it has 80% of the AI chatbot market share, whereas Google's version, Gemini, it has just 7%. And so ChatGPT is obviously winning the current battle of the AIs. But will it win the AI war? In my humble opinion, no. Because consolidation in bubbles is real. Right before the dot-com crash, did you know that there were eight tier-one search engines and website portals that most people used to search the internet, which I'm sure many of my Gen Z viewers will probably not even recognize? And guess what? Google wasn't even a tier-one search engine. It was actually a tier-two search engine. But within four years after the bubble burst, Google had already become the number one search engine in the world. And now there isn't even a contest. Google has over 89% market share in the search engine space. Basically, when stock market bubbles pop, the companies involved go through a period of consolidation where the weak get consumed by the strong ones. And this consolidation actually sped up internet adoption because it let the stronger companies with [music] better products like Google rise to the top. And I think it's going to be the same for AI too. The better it gets, the more people are going to use it.
So then why did Google win the search engine war? Well, first, they weren't losing money, which matters a lot since the reason why bubbles pop is investors stop investing money. So for companies like OpenAI that are losing money with ChatGPT right now, this makes them pretty vulnerable to getting swallowed up. And secondly, it won because it had an edge over its competitors despite being smaller. It had the most sophisticated search engine algorithm. And guess what? Google again today has a massive competitive edge. And this time it's because Google owns YouTube. No other AI company has access to as many videos to train its AI models. And this training data Google has from YouTube has let it leapfrog ahead of its competitors in content generation. They have arguably the best, most sophisticated image generator, Net Banana Pro, and they have arguably the best, most sophisticated video generator, VGO, which is crucial because, not to be too nerdy here, but the next big frontier for AI is supposed to be the ability to create real-world simulations. This will be crucial for scientific research. And to make these simulations, you need cutting-edge image and video generation. So it's not really a surprise that Google has also got the most sophisticated simulation model right now, Genie Free.
And don't get me wrong, I'll still use ChatGPT if it is the best tool for the job. But more often than not these days, you will actually find that there's another AI tool out there that is better. And actually, this brings me on to step five of my plan, which is to take advantage of as many free or low-cost AI tools to grow my business while I still can. Because I don't know if you have noticed, but this AI bubble is making AI tools dirt cheap. So, for example, here is another AI tool that is currently beating ChatGPT in a lot of benchmarks: Claude. It is an AI chatbot like ChatGPT that most people agree is superior in writing, both in writing code and just superior at writing in general. So much so that it can even write a full novel for you. In this tutorial on my channel, I actually used it to write a 70,000-word novel on a niche, high-demand topic that I could sell for a profit on Amazon. And guess what? Claude has a great free version, which is literally insane because, you think about it, right? Before AI, no joke, if you wanted to hire a ghostwriter to write a 70,000-word novel for you, on average, it would cost anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000 per book. But now, in less than a week, you can use the 100% free version of Claude to write it for you. That's just crazy.
And I seriously think people are underestimating this unique opportunity we have at this moment to build a GEO-friendly business while also using free or low-cost AI tools. Because literally, we've been here before. During the dot-com bubble, companies did the exact same thing. They gave away a bunch of unsustainable freebies in an attempt to grab market share, but it didn't last because it just couldn't. The only way it was sustained was through insane amounts of investor bubble money just sloshing around. It was basically a once-in-a-generation moment. So yeah, I'm going to take advantage of the fact that Clipchamp, a free AI-powered video editor, has a free AI voice generator. And I'm also taking advantage of the fact that Google is offering a one-month subscription to its AI pro tools like VGO and Nano Banana for free. And I'm taking advantage of NAT, a free open-source app that lets you create AI agents. Because seriously, I believe that this bubble is going to be the cheapest time to experiment and to learn how to use AI to build and scale a profitable business.
So then, if you're interested in how people, including me, are building AI businesses that earn us money every day, be sure to watch my next video here on screen, and I will see you in the next video.