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author | wang qin

editor | miao zhengqing

tiger sniff note: those who dare to make money can make money in any era. from business, real estate, foreign trade, to mobile internet, they chase after one hot spot after another, but the current hot spot is ai, a rare new growth in the stock economy.

while many people are indifferent or fearful of ai, ai gold diggers have already overcome one wave after another - the ai ​​track is changing with each passing day.

developing ai underlying big models is a money-burning game. the competitive landscape of big model manufacturers in 2024 has been determined, and funds are gathering towards several major ai big model unicorns and internet giants. according to zhidongxi statistics, from january to june 2024, there were 35 billion-level financings in my country's big model industry, with a total financing amount of more than 30 billion yuan. this volume is incomparable to the mobile internet era ten years ago. the one with the largest financing amount is still the big model unicorn moon dark side, which won more than 7 billion yuan in financing in february.

unicorns still need financing to survive and are still exploring application scenarios for commercialization, while new ai companies find it even more difficult to obtain financing.

the first to make money were small businesses that found commercial scenarios, from a group of wildly growing self-employed individuals: some developed ai tools, some used ai to run self-media, some used ai to assist in cross-border e-commerce, some used ai to make design drawings, and some used ai to "resurrect" deceased relatives...

this group of self-employed individuals belongs to the category of "small b and big c". they are essentially the c-end and consumers of ai tools. however, these ordinary people use ai to make money and evolve into super individuals with commercialization capabilities. they also have a certain payment ability as small b-end users.

this is the 16th report of huxiu ai spark. the ai ​​spark series will continue to track these participants who are influencing the future direction of ai.

wild growth at the bottom

around 7 o'clock in the morning, bartender chen zihao (pseudonym), who had been staying up late, would often receive messages from his friends urging him to wake up while he was still asleep - to learn how to make money.

chen zihao’s secret to making money is to use ai to create his own media account.

“in july last year, the number of accounts and followers increased very quickly,” said chen zihao.

chen zihao is a bartender at a bar in chaoyang district, beijing. he was born in 1998, has small canine teeth when he smiles, and has an ambition: first pay off the debt he owed from speculating in virtual currencies a few years ago, and start a business before he turns 28 and open his own bar.

using ai to maintain self-media accounts is one of his side jobs. maintaining matrix accounts, bringing goods, and selling accounts are the major steps to commercialization.

he once created a story about how a person who has lived on the moon for a thousand years delivers packages. give chat-gpt a line of prompts, and it will continue to write: how many light years does it take for the moon courier to do his job, how many light years does it take to rest, how to deliver to the earth on working days, how to get from the earth to mars and then to saturn...

before the free version of chat-gpt was released, chen zihao asked a childhood friend who was good at technology to help him get the free gpt-4 interface.

chat-gpt is used to generate text novels, and then the text is fed into the text-to-image model and the image-to-video model, and finally a video is made. ai leads or assists the entire process, and people need to talk to ai and adjust the prompt words. finally, human labor is required to make many adjustments in editing and dubbing.

an eternal shortcut to attract traffic is: pornography and borderline. chen zihao's aigc self-media account is emotional and has many pictures of beautiful women. it is distributed on douyin, xiaohongshu, and video account at the same time.

as a grassroots ai self-media, chen zihao uses ai-generated pictures of beautiful women to attract traffic. image source: provided by the interviewee

as for monetization, the first choice is to bring goods, chen zihao sells sex toys. the second is to share traffic. he attaches the original novel link under the video, and he gets a few cents or a few yuan every time a user clicks on the link.

in addition to emotional video accounts, chen zihao has also researched news accounts (he and his friends would do market research). some college students use chat-gpt to generate short news, post it to toutiao, and create news accounts. it is reported that using ai to automatically generate copywriting and create toutiao picture and text accounts can earn 500 yuan a day.

"a student who runs a news account told me that he can earn more than 90,000 yuan a month. if you create 100 or 1,000 accounts in batches, wouldn't you make more money?" said chen zihao.

using ai to create video accounts and news accounts is just a way to catch the trend and get the first bite. "if too many people create news accounts, toutiao will be flooded with comments and there will be no profit."

by november last year, there were already too many self-media accounts using ai, and it became difficult to create one, so chen zihao started selling his accounts and exiting the market. one account with more than 70,000 followers was sold for more than 10,000 yuan, and another account was sold for more than 8,000 yuan.

chen zihao just follows one trend and then rushes to the next one in his spare time.

top floor fight

"only by doing it full-time can you make money. others eat the meat, and we follow behind to drink the soup," said chen zihao.

but when the industry is in full swing, it is difficult for the "grassroots" to get a share of the spoils, the "meat eaters" are fighting at the top, and each sub-segment begins to have a leader.

ai bloggers have already created several niche tracks: "tudouren" accepts advertisements for luxury goods and consumer products, "digital life khazik" quickly follows news hotspots, "ye bodhisattva" and "zho" feature practical tutorials, "xianren yikun" makes commercial trailers, and "haixing" makes ai movies...

different from the rough style of “grassroots” ai self-media, the top bloggers are highly skilled and have their own strengths: commercialization, such as “土豆人”, often adjusts the products and logos to the maximum in ai drawings, which is similar to “giant worship”; cognitive enlightenment, such as “野佛士”, applies classic painting/photography/film styles in history to ai drawings, and uses “irrational” and “metaphysical” prompts to create drawings without the vulgar ai flavor; technical dry goods, such as “zho”, use video tutorials to build a knowledge building comparable to textbooks...

most of the top bloggers work in the content/creative industry, and their main business resources can also provide financial support for aigc's side business.

according to industry insiders, the commercialization path of the top blogger "tudouren" is very clear. he only accepts orders from big brands of luxury goods and consumer goods, and constantly uses ai drawings of luxury goods to make samples. he will not accept small brands no matter how much money they are offered. therefore, in the niche track of luxury ai advertising, he has become the leader, and it is difficult for latecomers to squeeze in.

an aigc blogger named "ye bodhisattva" was born after 1985. in his more than ten years of working experience, he has worked in the advertising industry, the communication industry, and the party a product company. he is currently a manager in a large foreign company. after chatgpt and midjourney v4 came out at the end of 2022, he started to work as an aigc blogger on the side. at present, his annual turnover as a blogger is equivalent to that of a small or medium-sized advertising company.

his revenue path is to-b enterprise services, course and community operations, and content marketing, of which enterprise services account for 60%-70%, courses account for about 20%, and content marketing accounts for 5% to 10%.

the sideline business of "ye bodhisattva" also relies on the main business for blood transfusion. he used to be a product manager in a party a product company and is very familiar with the design and promotion of consumer products. headhunters also know that he is doing aigc as a sideline job and will recommend him some jobs from consumer product companies that try ai for promotion. he is now a manager in a large party a foreign company and has spare time. "i am grateful to the company for helping me at a critical moment and promoting me."

"ye bodhisattva" has two annual corporate clients and provides corporate services: using its own media account to conduct marketing activities with brands, it can also directly use ai to draw pictures to provide companies with product marketing pictures, and accelerate the business links of companies, that is, reduce costs and increase efficiency. "in the past, when brainstorming for ideas, i didn't know what would happen if i put a dog and a casino together. now, i throw the idea into ai and it immediately generates a perfect solution, or even several different solutions. brainstorming saves costs, and when making closing reports and ppts, saves costs. if you save a little in every link, the overall efficiency will be improved."

under the cost-cutting and efficiency-enhancing measures, the photo library industry has been greatly impacted by ai. an advertising industry insider revealed that in the past, it cost 600,000 to 800,000 yuan a year to buy copyrighted images, but now it only costs 10,000 to 20,000 yuan to buy an ai account to replace them.

as a self-media, the most direct way to monetize is advertising, customizing product pictures or videos for brands. wen qu (pseudonym), an aigc blogger with tens of thousands of fans on xiaohongshu, revealed that his average customer price is about 50,000 for a picture or text, and about 80,000 for a video. but he receives few orders, which only account for 5% to 10% of the total income. he does not make money from this because "he does not want to be an executive." it only takes him three or four hours to make an ai video of tens of seconds to a few minutes, but it takes a week to communicate with the brand for modification. it is difficult to convert orders in the long run.

the longer-term monetization method is course + community operation. wenqu has formed a set of systematic courses with a total gmv of 8 million to 12 million, which is distributed among the resource party (responsible for investment flow), course organizer (operation, sales conversion), course content party (course instructor), and intellectual property party. wenqu, as the intellectual property party, can get one to two million.

wenqu has accumulated a group of students and formed a creator community, which regularly holds creative competitions with different themes. in this community, students can train their production capabilities and transform ugc (user generated content) into pugc (professional user generated content), and excellent student works can attract brand partners to cooperate and invest.

the market has smelled the scent of ai and started trying to pay for it, but some people embrace ai while others are hesitant about it.

among the brands that mingyu (pseudonym), an aigc blogger, has come into contact with, those that embrace ai often have innovative genes, such as technology companies that are strongly related to ai, such as nvidia and intel, or companies like ford motor company that are century-old but have innovative genes.

pr people began to try to place ads produced by aigc, but they both loved and feared aigc. people working at the bottom of the company were watching and wanted to take action and push the process to the upper level, but the upper level could easily fail to review it.

an employee of a century-old shoe and clothing store once approached mingyu to try to make an advertisement for aigc, but after the process was advanced, the overseas headquarters stopped the process, saying that it was a century-old brand that emphasized handmade products, and that the craftsmen would be upset if ai was used for advertising. other brands felt that the ethics of ai were not yet clear and did not want to rashly use ai for commercialization.

the wind of ai has blown the market, but there is no general consensus yet. at this time, the team doing ai business has to bear the cost of the education market.

mingyu found that many orders were aborted in the end, which was equivalent to providing free consultation for the other party during the communication. later, if the other party did not understand ai well, he would not accept the order. "i told the customer that i suggest you come back after you understand it."

while some people are still hesitating and testing the waters, the overall aigc market has already rolled forward. internet giants have already laid out aigc marketing: alimama's wanxiang lab uses aigc to create product images and clothing model images; baidu has launched the ai ​​advertising platform "qingduo"; douyin and kuaishou focus on aigc short videos, generating short video scripts/films, and digital human videos. among them, douyin blogger "linlangjie" uses digital humans to make short videos to promote products, and has sold 80,000 products at extremely low operating costs. according to reports, people at kuaishou revealed that the scale of aigc advertising revenue on the kuaishou platform increased 12 times in june this year compared to january this year.

the next wave

some people have already withdrawn from the ai ​​self-media track.

chen zihao, who used to run ai self-media, is one of them. chen zihao, who was a "grassroots" ai self-media, found it difficult to create an account in november 2023, so he changed his position. he discussed with a group of childhood friends who made money together and decided to shift their focus to cross-border e-commerce.

they sell everything according to the season, such as sun protection clothing, sunglasses, and sun hats in the summer. they buy goods from manufacturers all over the country. a childhood friend of mine lives in yiwu and learns about douyin e-commerce from local merchants.

ai can be very useful for cross-border e-commerce. by inputting text into ai, ai can automatically generate product pictures, and can also use ai to translate product titles and product descriptions into english.

cat-playing laser pointers are now available on amazon, with prices increasing several times

chen zihao sells an infrared laser light for playing with cats. a laser pen with a wholesale price of one or two yuan can double its value by putting a "cat" label on it and exporting it overseas. according to inquiries, the wholesale price of this simple version of the infrared laser pen is as low as 1.5 yuan on 1688, the unit price on pinduoduo is 2-10 yuan, and the price on amazon is 6-10 us dollars. the more sophisticated laser pen for playing with cats can be sold for 30 canadian dollars on temu (pinduoduo's overseas version) canada.

ai translates “key ring funny cat light” into “key ring funny cat light”. image source: provided by the interviewee

the english words on the product image of this funny cat laser pen are translated by ai, but they are still very rough. for example, "key ring funny cat light", i infer that the original words are "key ring funny cat light". however, the merchants who are growing wildly don't care so much, just use it first.

using ai to photoshop cross-border products not only saves models, but also saves costs on scenes, photography, lighting, etc.

but there are also transnational cultures that ai cannot understand. for example, product images must conform to local scenes and climates. "if you sell hats in hawaii, you can't photoshop an iceberg in. if you sell them in france, you can't photoshop a black person in," said chen zihao.

chen zihao has a small group of money-making friends, who grew up together. most of their parents are in business, and they are also very motivated to make money. the one who often urges him to get up at 7 a.m. is the big brother in the group, a ruthless money-maker - he works until 2 a.m. every day, responds to messages after work, learns tools, goes to bed at 3 or 4 a.m., and gets up at 7 a.m. the next day to continue making money.

in order to motivate his partners, the eldest brother often sent videos to chen zihao: in the videos, the eldest brother sat in the luxury car he earned, weighing and shaking two stacks of red rmb, more than ten centimeters thick, in front of the camera.

my brother’s goal is to earn 70 million - it’s meaningless to earn for a while and then take a break. if you want to take a break, you should earn enough money and then take a break for the rest of your life, and live on the interest.

the childhood friends are scattered all over the world. chen zihao works in a bar in beijing to pay off his debts. one is learning e-commerce in yiwu, one is buying goods everywhere, and one is mining in vietnam. they have an online video call about once a week, and the eldest brother assigns everyone's business tasks. the week before i met chen zihao, they had just established a new strategic focus in the video call - cross-border e-commerce. the eldest brother is in charge of the warehouse, chen zihao is doing shein and temu, and the others are doing amazon and tiktokshop.

there is a childhood friend who is a technical expert in the team. he developed a vpn, collected various ai tools for everyone, put them together into a website, and got a free gtp-4 interface for everyone.

a childhood friend of chen zihao used ai to create interior design drawings. image source: provided by the interviewee

another childhood friend uses ai to make interior design drawings. he can receive 4-5 orders a month, with each order ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan. he makes money from digital nomads - most of his clients are young people who either travel around or leave big cities and move to beautiful villages to build their own farmhouses or small villas and need help designing interior decoration.

"we are a group of people with great ambitions," said chen zihao.

the battle for big ai models in 2024 has spread from the model layer to the application layer, but ai applications that can make money are still rare.

one of the ai ​​applications that made money is a food record app "stomach book", founded by individual developer zhao chunxiang. his product is ui-driven rather than product-driven, which means that the app may not be fully functional, but it must look beautiful.

in terms of cost, access to the api of large model manufacturers. however, large models are all engaged in price wars, and the cost of using large model apis is getting lower and lower. however, there is only one developer of stomach book, the founder himself, so the cost can almost be said to be zero.

according to ai product developer huang's calculations, stomach book's revenue in the recent month (july) was around 47,000 yuan. although the amount is not large, it is almost pure profit.

the revenue of stomachbook comes from paid subscriptions. in the initial stage, the price of permanent membership is the same as that of annual membership, which stimulates users to pay.

it is reported that as a paid in-app purchase app, stomach book had a revenue of 12,000 us dollars in may when it was just launched, ranking third in apple's food and drink category (the first place is xiachufang).

the idea of ​​weizhishu is to find its own application scenarios and users, rather than looking for nails with a hammer. the needs that weizhishu targets are similar to the one-person food record in xiaohongshu. users will not spend extra time just because it is ai. the competitors of an ai application are not another ai, but other applications that have already found scenarios, such as xiaohongshu, bilibili, and games.

zhao chun wanted to build it in public on xiaohongshu to share the dynamics of application iterations in real time. xiaohongshu's user group just matched that of weizhishu, both of whom were young women in their twenties. under zhao chunxiang's posts, the most common comment from female users was "your design is so beautiful."

the enthusiasm of grassroots aigc self-media and individual ai application developers to make money opened my mind and allowed me to see a new world.

they don’t make money because of ai. with their sense of smell and enthusiasm, they can make money in any era.

others are starting their own businesses, selling yiwu small commodities to more than 30 countries, and opening up the global business loop on their own, while i can only write articles on ai, which is essentially still a job.

i began to imagine how i would make money.

i speak english well, so i offered to help them proofread the english translation of their product. chen zihao said, "ai translation is pretty good, but i'm so busy (i go to bed at 3 or 4 in the morning and get up at 7 in the morning) that i never thought of hiring someone."

yes, isn’t ai meant to replace human labor?

i have also coached students in applying to study abroad, which is a combination of english tutoring + creative consulting + psychological counseling. i don’t feel tired even when i talk on the phone until three or four in the morning, and i still feel extremely valuable.

chen zihao said, i seem to have seen your way of making money, why don’t you create a personal ip on xiaohongshu?

he smelled an opportunity for business cooperation and said to me: if you create a personal ip, we can work together, and i will help you create an account for xiaohongshu and douyin.

i'm a little excited.

"don't get too excited, just do it first," he said.