Anirudh Thakur

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How did I manage to EARN from the AI tools?

I started testing and playing around with AI tools around December 2022 but it wasn't a serious affair.

ChatGPT was the hype and after using it I was amazed but had very little imagination to envision its future and use cases.

I was also busy planning a Trip to Vietnam so learning about these upcoming tools was of the least concern to me.

Dalat Town in Central Highlands of Vietnam.

I finally went to Vietnam and had a great time in the 2.5 weeks that I spent exploring Central and Southern Vietnam. It was a much-needed break from everything and it was also my first travel abroad :)

After the trip, I felt the urge to do something more than my monotonous life and build skills that could help me leave the soul-sucking life of 9-to-5. I have not been able to leave it YET but I feel this is the YEAR when that will happen.

Anyway, as I was saying this trip gave me the boost to aim for more than the ROUTINE I am accustomed to living with, I started consuming content on YouTube.

I will be honest here. I wasn't looking into AI right away. I just searched for the typical 'ways to make money online'.

I have had a fair amount of experience with blogging, e-commerce, and content creation in the past but it never led to something HUGE.

So, when I was searching on YT, I was not very hopeful of finding anything new.

To my surprise, there were so many tutorials about creating coloring books with Leonardo and Midjourney, and then put the graphics in Canva, and BAM, you are good to go.

I was just hearing about these tools and tried them both and created a couple of coloring book pages. Then I went to CANVA and tried to make an ebook and published it on Amazon KDP.

I did not make any sales :D

BUT

I was excited for once and it made my eyes LIGHT up and my Brain started pumping some dopamine and adrenaline :D

I got hooked.

I started making stickers, t-shirt designs, logos, and cool images for many days.

I created a GIG on Fiverr with very low expectations of finding a client but luckily I found one and then two and then a few more.

At the same time, my Upwork profile also got some traction and I managed to land a few clients and sometimes 4-5 clients in parallel.

I made a couple of thousand dollars on Upwork and a few clients then took things offline and I have been working with them for 6+ months now.

I am still working on 3 projects in parallel at the moment:

1. Creating a chatbot using the Assistant API of OpenAI. (70% done).

2. A graphic novel inspired by Hindu Mythology in the style of Anime/Manga.

3. AI videos using Deforum.


Now, I don't claim to be an EXPERT.

I am still learning and exploring. You might know a lot of things that I don't know and I would love to learn those.

In a nutshell, I wanted to show you that I 'Walk the Talk' and I will do my best to share my knowledge and skills that might help you in getting similar or better results with the use of AI.

​Feel free to Ping me on X at @itsyopahadiboy or reply to this email :​)