The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - The $7K/Month Side Hustle Most People Think AI Killed - Ep. #333

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

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So what are your income numbers like today? Close to six or seven thousand a month right now. You don't need any specialized degree. I hadn't worked a ton on much of anything when I got started in the freelance world. And I was applying to stuff on Upwork. And I got hired by Biggie Smalls' son, Notorious VIG's son. When you're like, I want to be a freelancer, what do I do?

How do you find customers? They're everywhere. They are hiring AI model trainers, which is another lucrative opportunity. I are paying 90 an hour. I'm not a technical person. I have no coding background. Who's stopping you? No one is stopping you.

It's never been easier to just do that. All right. So what is the playbook to finding companies that will pay you a lot of money? So the other day, I saw a chart on Google Trends that stopped me in my tracks. This is the phrase, hire a writer and its popularity over the last five years. Would you believe in 2023, when ChatGPT came out, it started dropping. People didn't need riders as much, obviously. But now, over the last two years,

It's been going straight up and to the right. Believe it or not, good writers are in more demand than they ever have been, and companies are paying $900 to $1,200 per article for people to write AI-assisted articles. I almost couldn't believe this was true. I had to find out for myself. I ran into Steph Specter. She drove up here from Austin. We're about to take a ride in my cyber truck so I can ask her,

how can we get paid $1,000 per article to write in this age of AI? How are we even having this conversation in 2026? How is writing still a thing? Teach me your ways, Steph. Let's go pick her up. Stephanie in Austin, Texas. This is 2026, the age of AI. No one is writing by hand anymore.

Everyone has 100 blog articles all written by Chad GPT, but you make your money writing, like for real writing. For real writing. Right? Yeah. How did you get your start? Like what led you to that? Chad Chupt comes out in 2023.

What are you doing at that point or before? Around that point, I started working for Apple. I had a contract with Apple as an editor and I was editing sales enablement materials for them, just a fancy way of saying stuff that their salespeople would read to help them sell Apple products. Okay. And everyone was kind of freaking out about it, like didn't know if Chachybtee was going to take their jobs, if the writers were going to have anything to write. And in the beginning, at least within Apple, everything is really secretive.

They want to take their time adopting new technologies. So we didn't use it too, too much within the company. But I started experimenting with it just for myself, just to know what was going on there. Like right after it came out? Right after it came out. Okay. And immediately I wasn't super impressed. Okay.

But I know that I'm biased. I've been writing since 2016 so I can spot little tells that make it seem, I don't know, like it's a little more robotic or a little safe. Right. So I was like, okay, you know, I know that this is a big deal. So I'm going to monitor this. Kept using it for brainstorming for research. Using it for little tweaks like, hey, help me tighten up this sentence or this doesn't seem as concise as it could be. Started improving the way I would prompt AI.

Tested out clawed. Once that came out, found that that was much better at adapting to my voice. And then I started using all these other AI tools and I was like, oh, okay, everything has its strength, right? Like, I don't know, you know, like I'll use Gemini for processing video and audio. I think it's particularly great at that. for marketing content, chat GPT for writing and research. So I found that the more that I experimented and the more that I used these tools, I was like, okay, this isn't apocalypse now.

This isn't the end of my career because I know that I can still write with a little more humanity. It still pops. Yeah. People still want that writing, but it's definitely helpful with a lot of aspects of the writing process. Yeah. Okay.

So that happens in 2023. Yeah. And your job was writing for the salespeople to do. their job better? They would, so specifically, instructional designers, writers basically would write content. They would give it to me for review. And I would make sure that it's in line with Apple's style. So they have a really crisp, polished style. I had to make sure it aligned with all of those rules. They had to make sure it was clear. It made sense. A lot of the materials had to do with technical product. So everything needed to be clear and make sense. That was my job was reviewing that.

And I also at one point was tasked with coming up with a two-hour course that I would deliver on executive writing. So how salespeople, how sales leaders across the world at Apple could write stronger briefs that would be read by the CEO, Tim Cook. Okay. So I put together that as well. So, okay, so that was to teach the salespeople on how to talk to executives better. Yeah, how to write to executives better. Yeah. Okay.

All right. So when you say train the model or like train chat GPT on Apple style, is that just a matter of like uploading a bunch of Apple writing so it learns? Yeah. So with Apple, I wasn't, we actually were not allowed to use AI at the time that I was there. But later when I, when that contract ended, I started working Zapier. And I would do exactly that. So I would to train the AI, so to speak, give it a lot of context that had to do with our writing. We had a style guide that articulated, you know, how we capitalize things, how formatting should look, what do we bold, what do we italicize, what words don't we use? So I would give it all of that context and I would also create templates for certain pieces of content. So AI understood the general structure of what I wanted to create and then it could fill in some of the blanks. Okay. Now, were you a freelancer at this time? At this time, no, at Zapier, I was working there full-time. Okay. So you, you left Apple, started writing for Zapier, probably in my notes,

but what? Are you a freelancer today? Now I'm a freelancer. I just left Zapier about three weeks ago. Wow. So, congratulations. Thanks. Yeah, I'm super excited. So that was your full-time job. Full-time job. Writing articles for Zapier. Yeah. AI assisted, but not AI written? Yes. They were AI assisted. At first, I was just editing for them and then they wanted me to start writing more. So I thought to myself, okay, I know this is a company that really values using AI. They wanted everyone to experiment constantly. So at first, I was just doing what I described, right? Giving it context, giving it my template, seeing what it could do. We had a product, Zapier agents, where I would, build certain agents to help me automate the process of writing. But my favorite thing that I

think I created when I was at Zapier was when I had to write a tutorial, right? A tutorial was a step-by-step guide on how you could build a very specific automated workflow. And the people reading our articles are like, I have no idea how to use Xavier. Right. I needed to be really clear. I needed to add some personality into the writing. And I needed to express at certain points, if a step was a little difficult to configure, I needed to make that clear, first of all, and then I needed to help them through it. Yeah. What I did was I recorded myself, like I did a screen record, like a loom, if you guys use that tool. And I would build the automated workflow.

And I would narrate as I was building it. So I would go, ooh, this is kind of complicated. What if I click here? What if I do this? And this is your writing. This is my writing. This is writing. This is writing is thinking.

At the end of the day, writing is thinking. So all of that whole process, I want to document that. Yeah. And the first reaction, if I can document my initial thoughts about something, that's the gold that you can feed AI if you're going to use AI in your writing. Your reaction. Your reaction, your first thoughts, you're humanizing it. Yeah, what is actually coming to mind during the writing process?

Let's grab that. So I would record all of that. I would feed it through cursor, and I would tell cursor, okay, I want you to use Gemini to process the video and audio. And I want you to even watch, and when I say I would tell Gemini, I would just writing out in plain English, right? Process the video and audio through Gemini. Watch when I'm clicking, I'm hovering over something. Like it's clear that I'm unsure what to do. Capture those points.

Write up notes based on my narration. And then I want you to take all of those notes. And I want you to take a template that I've created for this tutorial. And I want you to feed it through Claude. Because I like Claude for writing and Gemini for processing video. And you're just using Cursor to route it to all these different models. Yep. Because Cursor has that built-in model flexibility.

So you can use both Gemini and Cod easily in the same workflow. Yeah. So loved it for that. Okay. It would filter all of those notes through Claude. It would use my template. And then it would come up with a really solid first draft that I would, of course, edit afterward.

There were still points. It maybe didn't get quite right or points that were a little bland that needed to be punched up with my personality. But I've captured all of those, like, tricky, sticky points of building a workflow that I needed to get in the article that would have taken me hours to document to think about manually. Yeah. So really great way to use.

I there. Okay, so you're doing this full-time for Zapier. What made you want to quit your job? Great question. I love Zapier. I'm still going to be freelancing for them. But before Apple, before Zapier, I had been a freelancer. And I really loved the spirit of just working on one-off projects, seeing what is going out there, you know, what is going on in the world out there, what are people writing and working on, what questions do they have? And I kind of missed that. So I decided to go out on my own again. And already it's been very interesting, especially going out in this age of AI. I had not really been a freelancer with all of these schools out there. So very different right now. Did you line anything up before you quit? Yes. I had already been freelancing on the side while I was at

Zabier and they knew about it. They were cool about it. I'd been writing articles for a couple of tech companies. And I also had been editing resumes for an executive writing coach. I had been helping students in high school write their college application essays. So I had my hands in a few different pies already. How were you finding those customers? A lot of them through Upwork. I started out as a freelancer on Upwork. That was how I got my first client back in 2016. And to this day, I still use it. I know a lot of people like don't love starting on Upwork or they're a little worried. It's great. You think it's great, right?

Yeah. It's rad. Because you have nothing to start from. Yes. When you're like, I want to be a freelancer. What do I do? Dude, you don't have to collect leads. Like, they're there.

Okay. So it's been 10 years since you started on Upwork, though, right? Yes. Yeah. How are you finding jobs on Upwork today? Are you, like, actively soliciting them? Are people reaching out to you? Now I'm really grateful that I have a few contracts.

that allow me to just kind of coast on those. So I haven't been hunting for jobs, too many jobs recently. But when I do look for jobs, I'll get into little moments where I'll go, okay, I'm going to apply to 10 jobs a day. I'm going to carefully select ones that, you know, are interesting to me, where I can communicate how I can help that person specifically, and that also have the opportunity to grow into something more. Every once in a while, I like a good one-off project where I just write,

you know, I redo somebody's website or I write them an email and then it's done. But if I see, okay, this person wants one blog post written, they're probably going to want more after that. So I can pitch that or they might just ask me. I can also offer to upload the blog posts myself, which is another great way to expand the contract and make a little bit more money. So anytime I see opportunities like that and anytime other people do, like I always encourage people. How else can you help this person? Once they like you, once you have a good working relationship, it's really easy to make a contract last even years, which I've done. Okay. How do you decide what to charge and how to charge? And let me also ask, what does like an average project

look like? What is an average project and then how do you decide what to charge and how to charge? Sure. This is a good question. It's a question a lot of people have and it is tough for a reason. But I'm going to focus on what I'm working on right now, right? I am writing a lot of blog posts for tech companies. And right now I'm charging anywhere from 900 to 1,200 per blog post. Okay. It takes me about five, six hours to write each article. Holy cow.

I am using a little bit of AI, but a lot of it's all me. And the tech companies know that, and that's why they'll offer that price. Give me an example of tech companies that would hire you for this. Any B-to-B SaaS company, I mean, sappier, jot form, softer, those are the ones that I'm working with right now. What about like chat chippy T or opening A-I-Claude? Right, right. Those are harder to break into. I don't think that they're, they are hiring AI model trainers, which is another lucrative opportunity.

I know I just talked to a writer who does that every once in a while and they're paying 90 an hour around that. So, I mean, not everyone loves the idea of training AI models. just ethically, that's your business. But that is there for you if you're, you know, wanting to get involved with AI. So. Okay. So 900 to 1,200 per blog article. Mm-hmm.

How many words are they on average? On average, about 2,500, 3,000 words. Oh, so long. Long. These are like lengthy. Yes, yeah. And is it more for like explaining things to an internal audience or to employees or is it solely for SEO?

SLO. Sully for SEO. Okay. So solely for SEO, you still want it to be readable and enjoyable by humans, but the goal is they'll give me, so here's an example of a project I might get. Software might say, hey, I want you to write an app comparison. So Claude Code versus Curser. Or they might say, I want you to write an alternatives piece. So eight alternatives to QuickBase.

Okay. In pieces like that, software is going to be one of the options, right? or whatever, you know, tool I'm writing or company I'm writing for. Or they might do, I write for Zapier, like a tutorial where I'm showing step by step how to build a workflow. Things like that, things that people might be searching for. They'll give me some keywords that they want to target. They usually provide that. So I don't even have to look at that.

You don't need to be like SEO savvy or technical. You should know SEO best practices. Those have to do with things like what should headings look like, what should subheadings look like? how many words, what should the title be? You should know not to keyword stuff, right? Google's very much values engaging writing that makes sense, that's clear, and that shows your expertise. And it shows that you yourself are using the tools. That's another reason why companies will pay so much money right now for these blog posts, because if you know how to use these tools, if you're tinkering with AI, you're tinkering with automation, and you can speak confidently about a certain

tool. They want to hear about that. Because a lot of people are, this is very overwhelming for them to learn how to use something like a code or whatever, if they're trying to learn how to vibe code, for instance. Yeah. So they want people with this kind of expertise and they'll pay them for it. So if you can write like that, you already have a good idea of, you know, what SEO best practices are. There are some new things to keep in mind, too, with GEO, which is just generative engine optimization, which is how you get your content showing up in AI tools. Very similar to SEO. I find there are a lot of overlaps, but that's another thing that you can study. Okay. So call it $1,000 for a 3,000 work blog article. Yeah. Taking you five to six hours.

What are you spending all that time doing specifically? Yeah, great question. I'm signing up for the tools that I'm writing about. I am noodling around and them just clicking, seeing what my experience is like. I'm not like building a whole product or anything. I'm not going to wild, but I'm using them, especially if I've never used them before, taking screenshots, potentially that are visually appealing. Like, technically, if you are tech savvy, right, and you use something like OpenClaw, which can take hold of your computer and take screenshots for you, like, it can do all this stuff, but it's not going to have that, that judgment, that creativity that these companies are looking for. Like, it might take a wonky screenshot.

It might take an okay screenshot, but that's not what the company's on. It's not going to know what to screenshot. Exactly. Right? Like, if you're writing an article of like the four best AI tools, it's Gemini, Grog, Claude, and Open AI. Right. And you go to Gemini on your phone and it's like, it's not mobile optimized on a certain block page. And it's like off centered. You would screenshot that. Right. Open Cloud would not know to screenshot that. Right. You could give it, I suppose, instructions. This is what a lot of people try to do and this is a mistake I see a lot of writers making is they'll go, to automate this process top to bottom. I'm going to use AI for everything. And then what happens is they actually spend so much time configuring the tool that they're using and maintaining it.

And the output isn't even 100%. And now they're burned out and they've got AI brain fry, as they call it, from just constantly using AI for everything. You can use it. And there's a great way to use it, but you use it in the place you need it the most. Yeah. Okay. So that's really interesting. Five to six hours, I'm thinking like, how are you writing for that long, especially if AI is helping? But would you say you're spending like much of that time or most of that time actually testing the tools that you're writing about? A lot of it's testing the tools. A lot of it is also reading Reddit threads. Like what are people saying right now about these tools? Yeah. If I'm in like certain communities, I want to see how people are using those tools right now,

what they're saying about it, videos about the tools. What I'll do. is I love REV, the video transcription tool. I'll port a bunch of videos into REV. I'll get summaries of what they say. And these videos are about the tools themselves, reviews. I'll try to find videos that aren't created by influencers that are, like, being paid to create videos about these tools. And then I'll find some interesting tidbits, and I'll do a little more research into that aspect myself. Yeah.

If people, for example, on Reddit are, you know, griping about a confusing pricing structure. I'm then going to go in, look at their pricing and really figure it out for myself and then go, okay. But I wouldn't put, you know, that might have taken me so long to find if I had just manually done the whole thing. So in my example, if you were writing that articles, you know, similarities and differences between the four biggest AI tools. Yeah. If you were to ask any of those four tools, ironically, to write the same article, you're just going to get like a regurgitation of other blog articles, much of them AI written as well. Yes. Whereas you are giving you.

personal experience. Yes. Which, sure, you could prompt an AI tool to do that similarly, but it wouldn't be honest. And it would, it just, you would know. Yeah. You know, you could tell. 100%. A lot of companies, these big name companies, right, Microsoft, Apple, Replit, lovable,

Anthropic, I've seen them posting a lot of jobs for writers and editors. And a lot of people are surprised. I was just talking to my dad. on the phone. He was like, why, why aren't writers gone? He was like, couldn't AI take over their jobs? And the point is, if you look actually at those job postings, I was just looking at one from Microsoft. They were looking for a lead writer and editor. They wanted someone who understood grammar, style, storytelling devices, but they wanted someone who also was plugged into meme culture and had some personal creative thing that they did. Like they, you know, played an,

instrument or ran a newsletter on something unrelated to work. And you have to think, well, why do they want that? Because they want a well-rounded person who's tapped into culture, who's going to pull from these rich experiences and put that into the writing. Because that's our advantage as humans, right? When I'm sitting down to write, I'm thinking about what, like, quirky story can I weave into the introduction? What, you know, a little tidbit. If the Olympics are going on, And I might reference that somewhere randomly. Whereas AI is, you know, pulling from what it's been trained on, your context, which maybe it's rich, fine, your prompt, and what it thinks is going to be most successful. Because of that, it's a little rigid, it's a little safe.

It's like a Hollywood movie that's just perfectly scripted the way that you would expect it to be. It's watchable, but you're like, I know what happens at the end. Yeah. It reminds me of some of my content because I'll see other people on YouTube with the, you know, videos titled like the seven best side hustles for 2026. Yes. And they're reading an AI transcript. I know it.

Yeah. And there's no personal experiences, no stories woven in. Yes. Whereas when I make that same video, it's like, when I had this grass fed beef business, the cow's leg went through the floor and was dragging on the road and they're real stories, you know? Right. So I think that's the difference between like a great, hopefully, a great YouTube video and like an okay YouTube video.

All right. Yes. Like you read chat GP2 to me instead of me reading it myself. Thank you. Yes. Exactly. You can feel that immediately. Even if you've never used AI tools before, you can watch content, read something and go, this all feels a little mushy. It's all feels very symmetrical, right? I'm not getting any reality in here. Yeah. Well, the Hollywood movie example is perfect. Like, it's like, it's like the Hallmark movie. It's always like the guy that comes home and he meets the girl and he's like a big city lawyer, but he wants to move. And it's like, it's generic. People watch them. Right. People read AI written articles.

Right. Right. But it's not going to be a blockbuster. No, like, no matter what, it's going to be a double or a single, but nothing more. Exactly. Exactly. Now, to me, as a business owner, that would be quite a leap of faith to spend $1,000 on a blog article when I could spend four cents in tokens on a comparably, you know, on a blog article of a comparable length. Yes. Right.

What, do you have any, like, case studies or proof that a company is getting 10 times more, 100 times? a thousand times more engagement leads, traffic, whatever it is from a Stephanie written article as opposed to a Chad GPD written article. I think the biggest proof that we're seeing now, because this is all happening in real time, right, is that companies did try to use AI for everything. And there was a big scare, I want to say, a year or two ago, where I was hearing a lot of stories from freelancers going, my employer just told me to hit the road, right? they're using AI for everything. And then a year later, those companies would come back and go, actually, are you free? Can you help me write this? And I think what happened was either they saw that the posts or whatever content they were writing wasn't working, wasn't connecting. They might have hit some kind of an SEO. Got some SEO. Yeah, they got excited because something worked for a little bit.

But for something to continue working, it's got to be engaging. And just like you said, you have to show that you're actually, you are creating this content. Otherwise, they can find that anywhere else, right? It gets boring real fast. Yeah. And you do lose that connection with your readers. So I think, although I don't have a specific study to cite, I'm hearing so many stories of freelancers going, all right, it's my time again.

Like people are recognizing that human writing, again, could be AI assisted. Might not be. But just having a little bit of humanity in there makes a big difference. Now, what do you think about this new water market that Anthropics? came out with it and maybe explain to people what it is if they haven't heard of it. Yeah, essentially Anthropic is going to be putting and they're already putting watermarks on any AI generated content. So if you copy and paste something that Claude created for you, there's going to be an invisible watermark. It's not like something physical that you see that will show you created this

with AI. I think this was a long time coming. I think if you spend any time on LinkedIn, everybody is losing their minds over it and a lot of people are happy because they're like, can't, you know, if... LinkedIn's the worst. LinkedIn's so bad. Yeah. I mean, people are just copying and pasting completely soulless posts and hoping that it performs and it never does. So, yeah, there is going to be some kind of a sign that you generated with something with AI.

If you edit the content enough, the watermark does go away. What constitutes as enough? I think people are discussing that. Or I'm not sure if Anthropics put something out on like specifics on. that, but it's not permanent. Like, it might go away if it's, if it's edited enough. Yeah. There are people coming out with tools already to remove the watermark. I just taught a class and my student was like, hey, by the way, you might want this. And it was some, some product

that you can pay for that removes the watermark. I can't imagine that's going to last. How is that product smarter than Anthropic, a trillion dollar company? Yes. Right, right. And Anthropic doesn't publish what the watermark algorithm is. Exactly. They don't say, yeah, this one has a watermark, this one doesn't. Right, right. So that's interesting. People are already trying to work around it. But I also think you don't have to. It's so much harder, again, to spend all your time configuring these tools, learning how to get the watermark off. You could just use AI to assist you and then put in the human work of creating great content. Even the CEO of Anthropic, I think a month ago he did an interview with NBC. He said, I don't use Claude to write.

I use it for research. I use it for assisting with certain, you know, aspects of the writing process. But the struggling, that part that everyone can stand, that is what leads you to the great idea. That's what makes the content. So it's so hard to just get that out of the process, you know? I'm glad you said that the struggle because I, in my church congregation, I'm like one of a few kind of leaders, right? And one of my jobs is to ask people to speak in church. Yes.

Just everyday members, and like two to four of them every Sunday speak in church. And I was recently at like a church activity in the evening and there were a bunch of youth speakers. And I just heard chat chad chibiti over and over like in their words. Oh man. And every talk was polished and it was all and it's not this, but it's this. Yes. Over and over. And so I texted like the main pastor of our congregation and I was like, I don't want to sign myself up for a job.

But like, I kind of want to speak in, in church one day, which no one ever does. No one wants to, right? It's like, I feel so strongly about this. I kind of want to speak in church about, like, using AI to write your talks for you. Yes. Because, like, the most, the richest parts of my testimony are from when I got asked to speak in church. And I spent hours just pondering. Yeah.

Not like hours writing, but just driving around. Yes. No podcast. Like, oh, no, what if I said this? What if I made that this analogy? Like, that's what everything's built on. What if we take all that away? What if we just replace it with a prompt?

Like, oh, there's no trade-off? Like, of course there's a trade-off. Right. And so I was just, it honestly worries me for these youth that they're just completely trading off that struggle, the wrestle for just a prompt and not thinking about it. And they just move on with their life. And it's really sad to me. Yeah. Man, that's a really interesting development.

Like, you would not expect, like, that's the last place that you would expect an AI-generated. Right. thing in church. And then, like, I sent that text to him as we were at this conference. Yeah. And then another youth went up to speak. And he never looked down. He had no notes.

Uh-huh. He told these heartfelt stories. He was unpolished. He was rough around the ages. And it was the best talk of the day. Yes. Yes. And so I text him like, wow, imagine that.

Like, right after I send that text, this one, there's no AI. And it's just, I just missed that. Yeah. Yeah. And we're seeing things trend in that direction. Snapchat just came out and said, no more AI videos. Yes. Right.

YouTube just came out and said, we're demonetizing thousands or millions of, like, faceless AI-generated channels. You're not banning AI. Sure. But they're basically saying we're deprioritizing it. Right. And then Anthropic came out with a watermark. And then SORA, which was, you know, Open AI's answer to TikTok, short-form video, social media platform. That was only AI-generated videos.

It got to 100 million users in like a month. And then they shut down like three months later. Right, right. And so it's like, we want real social. stuff more than ever. Yes. People crave it seriously. And you will feel better also.

I mean, literally you will feel better. I know people who I say that they've used AI for content creation. And after a couple of months of doing it consistently where they're heavily relying on it, they literally get headaches. And I know that there have been studies that have shown when you are delegating all of your thinking to AI, you, like, something's going on in your. brain where it's some things are not firing as much. Don't quote me on that. Someone's good. No, it's true. But it's true. You can feel it. So yeah, the fact that that youth are

doing that if I had a something I can say to them, it's like I get it. Writing is is painful and it's struggle. And especially today, when there are all these screens, there are all these things you could be paying attention to. Staying focused is an art. Yeah. Learning how to be articulate is an art. But that's exactly why people are paying so much for content right now, why I have a job, is because they value somebody who's taken the time to learn how to do that. And if you spend the time, this is a force multiplier that could spill into so many other areas of your life. Like, I'm better able to talk to my boyfriend because I can, you know, clarify my thoughts. I can do, you know, I can help people with their

businesses. I can have, like, more richer conversations. It's not just about, let me make a business out of this writing things. Clear thinking is clear writing and vice versa. Yeah, definitely. So if you publish a 3,000 word article, how roughly, how many of those words or sentences or whatever, what percentage of them would you say was copied over, like copy-pasteed over from AI and what percentage was like actually hand-typed? Sure.

I think for me, 70, 80% of those words are mine. Okay. I'm more interested in what. percentage was the, well, not more interested in, but there's also something to consider where, like, how much of the structure was AI generated? That is all mine, typically. Like, you know, what is the introduction look like? Okay. How many headings do I have? How long or shorter are, you know, is the body copy within those sections? The idea behind the article, close to 100% mine, 70% I'd say around might be my words. Okay. Yeah. Um, I want to go back to what you said

about the Dario, the Anthropics CEO, not writing emails. Yeah. I feel like the right way to use AI if we don't want to lose ourselves and our brain and a struggle is to like harness AI to enable us to do more, not to replace what we're already doing. Yes. Right? Like I use AI at church when planning talks, when planning lessons.

Yeah. But if I have like an hour in my week to devote to that, I still spend an hour. I just supplement it with AI and then it becomes more rich. Yes. I'm pulling quotes from the most random places that I never would have found with Google. Right, right. With emails, if I'm writing emails to colleagues, vendors, employees, whoever, people at church, it's all handwritten. Yeah. But I get, you know, having a podcast, I get a ton of emails from people like, hey, what do you think about this? Should I start this business? Yeah. And those were going unanswered. But now I have an AI trained on my thoughts and I can respond to them with AI. And it's not me.

Yeah. But it's trained on millions of words of my content, my data. It's almost like me. It's how I think. And most importantly, it enables me to answer emails and help people that I wouldn't be able help otherwise, right? So it's additive. It's not replaceive. Right, right. But what do you think about that? I love that.

I think that every time you sit down to write something or you're creating a process, you know, where you're going to automate that, the writing of something, you have to think about what makes sense for that situation, right? If you are, you're getting hundreds of emails every single day, thousands, whatever, you've got to have some kind of a process. Otherwise, you're going to, you know, be underwater real quick. Yeah. But one of the last things that I worked on at Zapier, I was copy editor on this report called the AI Workflow Index. And it basically looked at how successful or companies that were successfully using AI that were repeating the same workflows. That's how they defined success,

among some other things. How did they use AI? Where did they use it? And they found that they were not using AI for everything. In fact, I think it took up just 18% of the workflow. So it was usually like one or two steps. And if it was a content creation workflow, they would just have AI analyze something or write up a rough draft, not expecting anything to be perfect. And that would always get filtered to a human. There would be some human in the loop step. Usually when you're writing something to someone, if the volume isn't like huge, there is something that you can add real quick at the end while AI is assisting you, right? You can think about it that way. If it's truly like something that you can automate and you can, you have so much content to pull from and you know that

it's going to capture your voice well enough, amazing. You can even add steps where if AI determines that this is beyond the scope of like the context that you've given it, it can, you know, filter or route that to a human and automate all the rest. other things. If you're writing something really sensitive, that might be something you want to write from scratch with no AI, right? So it's not that everything should be dominated by AI. You want to be a little more thoughtful and considerate about what you're using it for. And the best companies do that. Yeah. So with you specifically, let's say you've written 100 articles that are 3,000 words. Yeah. Why can't you just upload that to a Claude project and have it

right for you like you? Is it still not good enough if you do that? It is, you'd be surprised because I've tried it all of like, I want to automate myself out of a job. I want to see if it's possible. And it's not working. Well, it's not replacing all the research. Yes, not replacing all the research. And it is capturing my voice somewhat. But it doesn't have all my memories.

Like sometimes I'll start at a blog post with something that happened to me in childhood just because I feel like it makes sense. Yeah, it would never know that. It would never know that. Even if it wanted to. Right, right. And if it did have all those memories, The context window would be way too large for it to even pull on. Then you would start to see, yeah, downgrade and just the quality of the writing because it's got so much context that it's processing.

Another reason why I don't love that is if you want AI to do all the writing for you, you're not letting your own voice evolve. So over time, you've become a more interesting thinker, writer as you interact with whatever subject material you're working on. And that's reflected in the writing. With AI, you're in a static position if you're just having it do all the writing for you. It's not growing. It's not learning. When it comes to like the people that make the decision at these job forum and all these other tech companies to hire you, do you know how they look at it? Like, yeah, like, of course they know what Chad GBT is. Yeah.

Are they thinking like, you know what? This is just worth it because our product is X, Y price. And like we know that the lifetime value is like, do you know what the calculus is in their head to justify paying $1,000? for an article? Sure. I know from the perspective of like having worked in Zapier and seen freelancers sending us content, they are concerned with speed. So they know that AI is helping these freelancers write a little more quickly, which really matters when something happens like Fable 5 is discontinued temporarily, right? And they need to get on that, you know, for SEO, like immediately same day, not just SEO, just to be a, you know, a thought leader, if you want to say

that in this space, right? I'm the person that publishes this content immediately after something happens. So they value the speed it provides. They also know that in-house, we can take an article generated by AI if it's 70% of the way there and touch it up. And I hesitate to say touch it up because there's a lot of work that is, you know, is involved with that. There's so much experience that we're drawing from. It's not like you can just change a word here or there. But we know that it's just helping us keep that process moving and it's possible. And everyone is so bullish on AI and wants to see just where it can go that we're pushing that limit. I do think there will be a conversation, a bigger conversation really soon about just the health effects of

using AI to the max of, you know, how it affects your creativity. I do worry that at a certain point, if you're constantly just going back to AI for everything, you yourself will start to run out of cool ideas. But companies are just seeing what's possible now. Yeah. What is your background? Do you have a college degree or like, when you trained it? Yeah, I have a bachelor's degree in creative writing. Okay. I remember when I got it, everyone was like, you're going to be poor. They were like, why? Why did you do this? And right out of college, I was a little scared, but I was so passionate about what I was doing. I immediately got a job. I think I started working like the week after I graduated at Gotham Writers Workshop, which is this creative writing school. They've been around forever. They're

right in the heart of Manhattan. And that's where I got a big start because I was doing admin work for them. I was talking to students who were signing up for their writing classes. They do like all kinds of creative writing classes. And I was also copy editing for them. They knew that I liked grammar and things like that. And then one day, one of their grammar teachers, they have like a little professional development program where they offer grammar and business writing. their grammar teacher got sick. They had a full class. They didn't want to cancel it. So they asked if I wanted to sub in. I was 21. I was not like their other faculty members. All of their teachers are like New York Times best selling authors. They're amazing. And here I am like a little pipsqueak and I'm

teaching grammar apparently. But I said yes. And even though I stopped working for them full time as like an admin after two years, I've been teaching grammar classes for them ever since. So it's been 10 years. In person? Some in person, but mostly virtual. Okay. Okay. So creative writing, what, how much do you think that plays into these tech companies hiring you? Huge.

Yeah. I think people, and I play that up in cover letters or when I do just cold pitches to people, I will say, like, my background is in creative writing. I know storytelling techniques. I know what is a sentence, right? I know the parts of a sentence. And so I know how to manipulate everything down to the word to achieve a certain rhythm, to bring a little bit more engagement, you know, to a piece that as soon as it starts getting a little bit boring or we start talking about something technical, I have a thousand different tools to, you know, bring it back to life. And that's creative writing.

It's holding your reader's attention. And that's, you know, no AI in creative writing. You cannot be using that to generate stories because what's the point? Like I'm very anti-AI and anything creative like that. So how can people find success at this if they don't have a creative writing degree or professional writing experience? Yes. So actually in preparation for our conversation, I went on Upwork and I hired four or five people to talk to me for 20 minutes. So you hired people as a employer on Upwork?

Yes, as an employee. I went on like the employer side. And I said, I'm looking for freelance writers who have been doing this for X number of of years making, I think I said, like at least 3,000 a month, just to talk to me about how newcomers can break into this business. Oh, that's awesome. And you, I mean, I, it was up for two days. I got 15 applications that were all really thoughtful. Yeah. Talk to four people. They wanted to talk beyond the 20 minutes. Like, they were more than having. You only paid them for 20. Only paid them for 20. And they were like giving me resources. Someone gave me their like SEO, AEO guide.

They were like, you can share this. I mean, writers are, writers are solitary. So any time we can like, yeah, like they were very excited to talk. I'm sure I'm going to keep in touch with all of these people. So I was asking them, what can people do? Because I have ideas, but everyone has their own journey, you know, into freelancing. Yeah. And a lot of them were saying things like, well, all of them said, you don't need any specialized

degree. You don't have to have even studied creative writing English, whatever, none of those writers had a writing degree. Yeah. What they said you need to do is first, like if you wanted to get started in 90 days, right? First month, you need to understand the landscape of what's possible. You've got the creative writing world. A lot of people are publishing, like self-publishing books, fiction, memoir, whatever, nonfiction books for their business.

You can be an editor in that space. There's also this whole marketing corporate world where you can create copy for, small businesses, bigger companies, there's blog posts, landing pages, ads, scripts. I mean, you name it. You can write it. So look at what's possible. Ask yourself, what am I interested in? Because if you have just a glimmer of interest, you know, you're probably drawn to something. And start in that niche? Start in that niche, right? I think I started as a generalist and it took me a bit of time to realize, all right, I need to get good at one form because that's how someone's going to trust me to hire me.

So I love barbecue, like Texas barbecue, and I want to write or I like writing. Yes. That could be my niche. Totally. I could write for Trager or company, like, e-commerce brands that sell barbecue stuff or a restaurant. Yes. I saw, I'm like, I'm really into barbecue.

I saw that there was a new beef protein powder that was getting sold in stores. I contacted the guy who ran the company. I said, hey, I tried this. This flavor is awesome. Like, don't stop. Whatever. for some human connection there. That's honest and true and genuine.

And then I said, hey, like, I see you have a blog. Do you need a writer? Yeah. Really? Right, just like that. Yeah. Did you wait for him to respond before you pitch that? No, I put that in the pitch.

Yeah. Wow. So sometimes that just being up front works. Well, my friend Brandon has a marketing agency for e-commerce brands. And he would just be like swiping reels on Instagram and see like a new e-commerce brand, new Shopify brand. And he's like, oh, that's really cool. They're good branding. And then he'll just like, DM them and say like, I can help you with Facebook ads. Like, this looks really cool.

Right. And it's just like, really? That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not everyone says yes, of course. But like if it's authentic, if it's not AI, if it's your real experience, which we keep coming back to, like testing all these technical tools, then your chance of success is much higher. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So what else did they say in these interviews. In these interviews, they were saying you have to have a portfolio. So you don't need some kind of a certification, but you want to have produced, I would say, four, maybe five pieces of writing. You can just put it up on your site. It doesn't have to be like you have to get published somewhere because that's quite hard when you're just starting out. But yeah, if you want to write

blog posts, write three blog posts and a landing page and some other form just to show you've got range. Well, go write an article about what makes Franklin Barbecue. different. Yeah. And then put it in your, you don't have to sell it to them. You can give it to them. Right. But you don't have to say like, they paid me to do this.

They are my customer. It's like, no, I wrote this blog article for Franklin Barbecue. Here it is. Yeah. Right. Like, that's kind of a rare opportunity. Whereas usually when you need your first case studies or clients or something, like you've got a chicken and egg problem because you have to get hired before you have that, but you can't

get hired until you have that. Right. Exactly. You just go write the thing. Who's stopping you? No one is stopping you. It's never been easier. In fact, to just do.

that. See, and if you have that, and you can offer that, once you get hired, then breaking into the writing, you've already broken into the writing industry. It's about developing those client relationships and seeing what else you can do for that person, especially if like you get along great. I mean, I've referenced earlier, I edit resumes for this like executive resume writer. We've been working together for two years. She's awesome. We chat. We, you know, we're laughing over video call and then she knows she can just send me whatever. She knows that if she's refreshing her website, I'm also available to help for that. So once you develop that trust, people don't want to go out and find another writer. Even at Zapier, we were like, we had our freelancers that

we were like, we got to hold on to these people. They're amazing. So, yeah. Is there like a piece of writing that you've written and is on the internet that you're particularly proud of? And I could read like a paragraph from it? Yes. So then they might have. I've edited it because they're always having to refresh this, but I wrote a feature guide, Zapier MCP. If you search that and then search feature guide after that. This was something we had just come out with this product when MCP technology came out. Everyone was losing their mind about it. And I'm not a technical person.

I have no coding background. And they said, write a feature guide now. I said, okay. What is a feature guide? Great question. So feature guide explains. This is everything it does? This is everything it does. This is what it is. This is all of the things that you can do with it. Sometimes I'll also show you how to set it up step by step with screenshots. So it was quite dense. What I love about it is you would think just by hearing the name, oh, this is kind of complicated. This is not for me. But this product is for non-technical users. So I had to make it fun and make it accessible. And this was so, this succeeded in that regard so much that Anthropic actually.

published it or linked to it in one of their newsletters, driving a ton of traffic to it. And they had said something like, this is great. And I was like, I was so proud of it. That's a great example of justifying a thousand dollar blog because how much money did that bring Zaid? Yeah, that's, I'm sure. That's recorded somewhere. And does Anthropic post it if they look at their watermark and like, big deal, we wrote this? Yeah. Yeah. Let's just write our own and publish it. Exactly. Right. Is there like a part of this that you're particularly proud of? of or that really shows the human in it? There's definitely, I have a few lines where I mentioned something where I said, like,

this is bananas. I'm trying to see if I can quickly find it. I saw earlier you said like, or if you want to play a video game, more on that later. Yes, I had stick with me here. Right, right. I had compared it to being like a video game. Mm-hmm. And I'm, that's what I saw.

Yeah. There it is. Yeah, yeah. So the menu customization built into Zapier, MCP, reminds me of action role-playing video games. Stick with me here. In these games, you can equip your main character with gear that complements your play style

or the quest at hand. Similarly, with Zapier-M-CP, you choose which actions to equip based on your workflows and security needs. So it's not like you, when I say, you know, making your writing human or adding some personality, that doesn't mean making it clownish

with very informal examples. and you're right, it doesn't even land with your audience. Just these little additions like I play video games, so I have that vernacular built in. You can speak to that with authority. Right. And no one, you know, you don't have to play video games to understand what that means too.

So that's a little pop of color that like AI would have never come up with on its own. Now, I'm going to do something I'm curious about. I just wonder if, because I remember two years ago, everyone was like, man, writers are the first to go. Artists are the first to go. Oh, you can make these images, you can make videos, they're the first to go. That's crazy. Right. And now I'm just wondering if riders are going to be even more demand than they were before. Yeah. So I'm going to go to Google Trends and I'm going to look for the phrase hire a writer and see what it looks like. Look at that. Look at that. How cool. It's never been higher. Right. And then let's go last five years. I want to see if it dipped when Chad GPT came out. Oh, yeah. Chad GPT came out late 2023. It did kind of dip a little bit. I mean, it was coming up.

And then it went down and then people like, we need a ride around. Imagine that. Now, something like that, like your feature guide, you have no way of really knowing this. Maybe it's a bad question. But five years from now, let's say 100,000 people have read that. Yeah. What percentage of those people are AI agents or, you know, chat, GPT, like them, like, reading it to source stuff from it and spit out an answer? What percentage of that are actual humans?

That's a great question. There are people whose job it is now to create content for AI agents, and they are structuring the writing a little differently. So I think if those roles exist, that means that's coming, or if it's already here. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. I do still think, and this is just an opinion, people will tire of the always automated everything all the time deal. and they will kind of like records, right?

Record players, they'll want to go back to reading something manually, not just getting their AI to look for it. I mean, I'm hearing so many people go, I don't even know how to read anymore. Like, I haven't picked up a novel in like three years, which is so sad. That's like, yeah, you learn so much, so many lessons, so many interesting stories from creative writing.

And we're not talking about creative writing necessarily, but I think it starts there, like the curiosity to go out, and read something yourself. That impetus drives, like, what, you know, makes people read just blog posts on the internet and find things out for themselves. And it also drives their interest in books and stuff like that. So I think there will be a resurgence of, like, more people reading stuff on their own. So it won't all be AI agents.

Yeah. You know. One of my favorite quotes, and I say way too much is there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And the worst, the worst decisions that we make, are the ones where we don't know what the tradeouts are.

Yes. Trying to think of an example. If I go to a grocery store and I'm hungry and I've got an apple and a Snickers bar, I know what the tradeoffs are. Right. The apple is going to be cheaper than the Snickers. It's not going to be as many calories, but it's going to be significantly healthier. It's going to be one ingredient instead of 15 or whatever. Right.

I know what the tradeoffs are. Like, this is good for me. That's bad for me. Got it. But like with AI, we don't yet. And maybe we never will. And it's similar to things like GLP ones, which, which, you know, No shade to anyone taking them.

For sure. If I needed them, I would take them. But what you hear people say is like, actually it seems pretty good. Right. Everyone's good. And it's like, you don't know. Like, let's say it never gives anyone cancer. It never gives anyone, like adverse effects, like physiologically speaking.

Right. We still don't know the mental effects of like not having to actually lift weights to get strong anymore or to go running to lose weight. Like, will we ever truly know the tradeoffs that we're making? Right. If not, my theory is that's pretty harmful. Like, you want to know the tradeoffs. Yeah, you want to, sure, you want to try new things. I know people are really into whatever the latest thing in tech is, I'm going to try it out.

Yeah. But you want to go into it thoughtfully. So again, you really don't know what that could result in. And I think what you want to protect most of all is in here, right, in your mind. You want to make sure you have the sovereignty and the, just the energy to think for yourself. As soon as we start delegating. that to something else, even if you don't know what the effects are, no, that gets me a little scared. I would want to hold on to at least some of that. Yeah. All right. So what is the playbook to finding high paying or to finding companies that will pay you a lot of money to write articles? I think got to get started with a portfolio. So first make sure that you have some writing out there in the world. It will feel a little uncomfortable, but if you get started on upwork or if you ask a family or a friend for, you know, hey, do you know anybody who's starting a business or just needs help with their writing?

I mean, again, I mentioned earlier, I do this thing where I help college or high school students write their college essay applications, 90 an hour. Like really lucrative stuff is out there. And even if you don't start at that rate, if you start for a little cheaper or even free, It is not for nothing. One, you might be developing a really great relationship with that person that will pay you more later. Or two, you just might learn a new skill or a new format or get better at your craft, which you can then show to somebody else. Yeah. I hadn't worked a ton on much of anything when I got started in the freelance world and I was applying to stuff on Upwork, had a little portfolio.

And I got hired by Biggie Smalls' son, a notorious fee hij. he was starting a CVD brand. And I didn't even know at first because he didn't advertise that like he was his son. And it just like came out as we were working together. It was like, oh my gosh. This is so cool. And then from there, I mean, they trusted me with helping them edit press releases, doing like PR and communication stuff that I'd never done before. But because, you know, I worked for cheap, like in the beginning and then worked my way up, asked for, you know, more money at some point. Like, that worked out. That was great. How did that brand end up doing? I don't think they're around anymore. Despite you. Despite me. Despite me. No, but they were, I think he might have started like another clothing company. He was, he was so involved with everything. That kid was amazing. Okay, so a portfolio, does it matter where you host it? Could you put it in a Google Drive folder? Do you want it on a website? I think on a website is, I know, yeah, you make something look professionally. You put it up there. That's, that's probably the best. I have. I have. put together like curated portfolios for certain projects. Like if I know that this person just

wants me to work on emails, like I'm just going to compile emails that I've written to show them that. And I'll put that in a like a Google Drive folder and that's okay. Okay. To start, I think having a more professional, like well designed thing is probably your safest bet. Okay. Now, how do you find customers? You, they're everywhere. They're everywhere and nowhere, right? Like, how am I going to find this person? I have found customers and the people that I spoke to have found them. If you're not on freelancing sites, getting on social media and just whether it's LinkedIn or wherever it is that you're active and commenting, engaging, directly messaging people, it doesn't have to be gross. Like, you don't have to be weird about it.

You can talk to them like a human. If you master the art of the cold pitch, right, which really, I think comes down to, for, or five sentences where you are briefly introducing yourself, you're making some sort of connection to something that person does that you like, that you genuinely like, not just like the first piece of content that you see that they posted recently. One time I listened to a whole podcast that some agency had put out, and it was a lot of time investment on my part, but I was able to reference some really specific detail. And they literally called me and they were like, this is so impressive. Like, we need to talk to you right now. So,

You never know, like, what doing a little more research than you wanted to do might get you, like, in the long run. So, yeah, some little personal detail. You don't have to go crazy. And then show them the portfolio and then say, I'd love to get connected. The worst they could do is ignore you or say no. Right. Get over it. Get over it. Yeah. What's like a good rate to start at? Like a rate that is where you're worth your while, like, yeah. but is like, you know, aggressive enough so they won't say no. Yeah. I'm seeing, I struggled with this because I thought about this and I was like, man, it really, really depends, but that answer is boring.

So I think I'm seeing a lot of 30 an hour on upwork, 40 an hour. You can get away with that, especially if you've got the things of them describing, the portfolio and the pitch that's tailored well. And they might come back and counter with something lower. and if you think it's worth it, that might still be worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you say per hour, is that how people want to be quoted? I don't like it.

But sometimes people want to be quoted per hour. When you're saying per hour, are you saying you go to the brand and say, all right, articles for you for 30 per hour? Or are you saying you kind of budget in your head, this is going to take me three hours, so 90 bucks? Sure, sure. There's, it can be both. Yeah, you can do it in either way. Some brands will say, we're going to get you on something hourly.

and they've seen it done in a really weird ways where they think they will tell you how many hours you're working and you're like, well, it's actually taking time. Yeah, not quite that way. But now when I work with people, I ask them for a few things. I'll ask them for if I know it's going to be like a single deliverable, like I'm going to update your website or I'm going to write a totally new copy for your website. I want to get a sense of how many words total it's going to be or how many pages, right? It's kind of hard to estimate. words. I want to get a sense of if they have existing copy already, can I take a look at it? What shape is that writing in? If it's really rough, I know it's going to take me a little more time to get it into shape or if they have no copy at all, I got to create stuff from scratch. You know, I might need to spend a little more time with them. This is another great way to use AI. When you're in a meeting with somebody gathering content for your writing, if they're cool with it, turn on granola. Like, capture Explain what granola is. Granola is a tool that you can use that plugs right into your video calls that transcribes everything that they're saying.

It takes notes, right, knows who's speaking. And after the call, you can ask it questions like, hey, what was the due date for the project? Right. It'll give it to you. And you can ask it much more detailed questions. I just used that with my boyfriend's business. We were writing coffee for his new water softener installation. site and I just had a conversation with him and recorded it all with Renaud and it was like,

because I know nothing about water softeners and he's got all the technical linko. So I was able to create this really awesome site for him based on that. So yeah, you can get a sense of how much time a project is going to take you by asking those questions first and then rather than charging them hourly, give them a project based quote that feels fair. You might even still be calculating it based on like an hourly rate, but there are no surprises. You know that like, you know what the scope is. You know this is what you're going to charge them.

It just feels better for everyone involved, I think. That's my preference. So what are your income numbers like today? Today, I would say I'm writing anywhere from five to ten blog posts at around, again, anywhere from 800 to 1,200 per blog post. Is this per week or per month? Per month. Okay.

Per month. And I have a bunch of side projects going on as well. So once or twice a month, I will help a student with their college application essays. I sell it in packages of five at 90 an hour, so 450. And I also do coaching. And those packages vary. I just got back into freelancing. I was working full time.

But I would say close to six or seven thousand a month right now. Wow. Yeah. Mostly from writing. From writing. And it's like technical writing. from a non-technical person. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Writing, coaching, editing, all in the same family, different skills. Yeah. Well, if someone wants to hire you, where can they find you? You can find me at steffpector.com. S-T-E-P-H-S-P-E-C-T-O-R dot com. Okay.

Thank you, Seth. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. Hey, guys. If you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn.

You're still driving, what have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. It would mean a lot if you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.