How to Make $21,000 a Month as a Freelancer Using AI: A Step-by-Step Guide

Look, I grew from zero to making over $21,000 per month as a freelancer, and now with AI, this is much easier than ever before—even if you are a complete beginner. In this video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know to start freelancing, and if you stick to the end of the video, I'm even going to show you where you can go to find clients. Plus, I’ll give you our copy-paste messages that we use to make thousands of dollars for the services that we are going to talk about in this video. But if you can’t stay on this video without clicking on something else, then I’ve got some bad news for you: You’re just not going to make it. These next 10 to 20 minutes are enough to give you the mindset, the tools, the systems, and the templates you need to start building a successful freelancing career. I’m going to give you a four-step method that you can start using today—even if you’re starting from scratch—and after that fourth step, you’ll have that "aha" moment.

The Freelance Market is Exploding

Look, the freelance market valuation is projected to increase from $7 billion in 2025 to over $16 billion by 2030, which is amazing news for you. That is more than double, and if you look at the past, it has been growing steadily year after year. Clients are spending more money than ever before to hire people like you, versus hiring full-time or part-time employees. So now the question is, what are people actually spending all this money on? What are the services? Let’s look at Upwork, since it’s one of the biggest freelancing platforms out there. Here’s what I found: Web design and social media marketing are taking over the world by storm. And the cool thing is, these services are the easiest to deliver and automate using AI. So you don’t have to be a professional.

Step 1: Choose a Profitable Skill

Step one is to choose a profitable skill. I’m talking about something that makes the business more money or saves them more time. This is how we actually create value. You want to tie everything you do back to them making more money or saving more time because of your services. Don’t just build a website that looks pretty and try to sell that to clients. What they want is more leads, more appointments, and more sales. So all the web designers reaching out to clients and saying, “Hey, I can rebuild you a new website that’s perfectly optimized,” is completely wrong. Imagine if you reached out to clients and said, “I’m going to build you a lead generation machine that works 24/7, maximizes your website visitors into leads, appointments, and conversions to make you more sales—which means more money in your pocket.” Who are they going to hire?

Web design and social media marketing are amazing; I’ve made a lot of money in both of those services. But I think the future belongs to those who can do simple AI automations and set up systems for these business owners. This is going to be the future. With the rise of AI, local business owners don’t know how to integrate it with their business. Now, I would argue that the AI systems are actually easier to set up than websites or social media marketing, and I’m going to show you exactly how in step three.

Step 2: Choose a Niche or Segment of the Market

Now for step two, what I want you to do is choose a niche or a segment of the market that you can specialize in, so you know their needs better than they do. What I found works well in freelancing is working with these boring local businesses because a lot of times they go overlooked. Everyone wants to work with sexy industries, but I’ve made the most money with local businesses. When I started in the beginning, my niche was literally anyone who would pay me—I just needed money. But what I did have around me were those trucks that drove by the road that said “Roofing,” “Landscaping,” or “Plumbing,” and I thought, “Maybe I should just work with these business owners.” As I started reaching out to them, I realized that these handymen, these people who don’t understand the internet, are way behind on the times. They all had old websites but had been in business for 10, 15, 20+ years—they just didn’t know how to get to that next level. And I promise you, now with AI, these are the last businesses sitting there on Google researching AI. I guarantee a lot of these people have never used ChatGPT before.

Step 3: Deliver Results Using AI and Automation

Here’s the best part: If you are a beginner, you can also offer free trials to your services. This trains you on how to actually deliver services, trains you on how to communicate with these different business owners, and potentially gives you case studies, testimonials, and reviews for your services—even if you are a complete beginner. You can go the Upwork, Fiverr route, but I’ve just seen working with local businesses to be much more successful.

Step 4: Get Clients with a No-Brainer Offer

Finally, let’s talk about how to get clients. Offer a 7 to 14-day free trial for each business owner. This gives you a no-brainer offer—the client has nothing to lose by just saying yes. You just install a little piece of code on their website, and now they’re getting more meetings. It also trains you on how to onboard clients, how to speak to them, and it gives you real-world experience on how to set up all this AI and automation. After the free trial, it depends on what service they want to continue with. If they just want the website, I recommend you charge $100 to $150 a month. If they want the full suite of AI services, which by the way, we didn’t even cover half the services that you can offer, I recommend charging $300 to $500 per month per client, depending on what you’re comfortable with.

Here are two copy-paste messages that you can use when reaching out to clients to give them a no-brainer offer.