The Only 10 Ways to Make Money with AI in 2026: Ranked From S Tier to F

Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree Sabrina Ramonov — who sold her AI business for over $10 million at 30 and now runs Blotato for thousands of clients — ranks the 10 real ways to make money with AI in 2026 by a single metric: how easy is it for beginners? From one-to-one coaching to faceless video, from creator sponsorships to done-for-you automation, the video maps each path to pricing, how to find the first customers, and where it scales beyond your hours.

Why S-Tier Is About Selling Hours First

At #1 is AI coaching , a one-to-one session where you sit with one person and set up ChatGPT or Claude for their business use cases so answers stop being generic. It is S-tier because anyone who has binge-watched AI content already sits far ahead of most businesses still stuck on generic prompts. That gap lets you charge $100 to $500 for a personalized setup session. First customers come from the warmest circle: message 20 busy people you know, offer to save 5 to 10 hours per week, post on LinkedIn and social that you are open to coaching. No audience and no website needed — first dollars can land this week. The hard ceiling is that you trade time for money; the rest of the list is about income that scales beyond hours.

Number two is faceless videos , B-tier. The example is an AI avatar monk on Instagram that went 0 to 2.5 million followers in a few months, with a human behind the strategy, scripts and edits while the avatar talks to camera. You pick a niche like health tips and build the character with AI images, video and voice plus B-roll and an AI voiceover. The warning is clear: do not confuse AI generation with automation. Content demands heavy early testing of hooks, scripts and formats with AB testing ; automate only after you know what wins. Monetization is not a chase for clients — it is platform rewards plus the larger check from driving traffic to a link-in-bio offer , digital or physical. That is usually richer than platform pay. B-tier because great content must ship consistently and the learning curve is real; faceless income is slow to compound.

Face On Camera vs Faceless: Why Sponsorships Come Faster

The sibling path is being an AI creator with your face on , A-tier and similar to what the host does here. As you post about AI and grow, brands reach out to pay for a feature in front of your audience. Early creators are often shocked when a first deal lands at $1,000 for one post — not far-fetched in the AI niche. The entry cost is just a phone and front camera, no big tech stack or upfront cash. Pick an AI corner you genuinely like and talk about it. The only price is time to grow, so this is A-tier: no hard skill gate, but audience takes months.

Number four is an AI-native marketing agency , B-tier. A normal business already runs Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO and organic social , so you layer AI across each to save time and lift results. Start by learning the basics of the service you will sell. If you want to run a social media agency ( SMMA ), can you combine it with AI to deliver faster and better? Hard to do AI-native if you know nothing about marketing itself — that is why it stays B-tier.

From One Team to the Whole Company: Training Into Consulting

Number five is business training , the one-to-many version of coaching and again S-tier. Instead of one person you teach a whole team, usually in a single paid workshop or a short series. At $150 per head a single day can clear thousands. About 80% is the same package, 20% customized , so you do not rebuild each time. You can repurpose existing YouTube trainings into a 2-hour slide deck. Client sourcing is DMing CEOs on LinkedIn and Instagram and posting tips that pull inbound DMs. Very easy to deliver, so even a few bookings make a strong day rate.

Training is a natural on-ramp to AI consulting , A-tier. You start with a formal audit — free to $1,000 — mapping pain points and current systems into a strategic roadmap. You can apply on Upwork , network with CEOs on LinkedIn and Instagram, and price engagements in the tens of thousands when tied to high-ROI plays: lead generation, marketing automation, social media automation, Facebook ad automation and customer support . Once training has given you inside knowledge of the business, the audit-to-roadmap step feels earned, not cold.

Owning the Build: From Automation to Packaged Knowledge

Number seven is an AI automation agency , C-tier and more technical. You build done-for-you systems: chatbots, content pipelines and assorted workflows. You need to learn what an automation is and which tools to use, then live with troubleshooting and debugging when flows break — which they do. Most businesses are a dumpster fire of systems and data, so this path is not for people who dislike debugging. That honest caveat pushes it to C-tier.

Number eight is the fun one that can sell while you sleep: digital information products , C-tier. Learn something — for example a useful skill for social media marketing — package it as a skill.md file, PDF guide or prompt pack and sell it for as long as it stays relevant. You build once and sell repeatedly. The workflow is to audit your own stack, have AI interview you about templates, then wrap it as a download. The widely misunderstood part is customer acquisition: people spend 90% on the product and 10% on marketing , when it should be the reverse. The easiest buyer is an existing audience. The video's math is 1,000 buyers x $100 = $100,000 one time. Without an audience or a partner who has one, this only works on paper. Number nine turns that one-time sale into every month: a paid community , C-tier. It blends information with people — classroom courses plus access to peers obsessed with the same topic. The math is $50 per month x 200 people = $10,000 per month recurring . There is churn as people leave, offset by bringing new members each month. Again tough without a prebuilt audience, so C-tier despite beautiful recurring math.

The Hardest Bet and the Closing Path: Why Vibe Coding Sits at F

Number ten is what the host personally does and calls the hardest: vibe coding a product , F-tier. You have an app idea, hand it to AI and it builds you the app — mobile or, in her case, a web app like Blotato. When something breaks you need a bit of technical know-how, monetization is fiddly, and without a personal brand, existing audience or strong marketing the launch goes nowhere. Same pattern as before — distribution beats code. That is why F, even though it can scale to millions once it works.

The video closes by stacking the full tier table from the first $150 to millions at scale and then gives a personal path instead of a random pick: build a personal brand first, pick one topic, post every day and use Blotato to go viral faster and stay consistent. The call to action is light — like, subscribe and hit the bell — but the strategic note is heavier: pick the distribution path before the product path.