How I Started A 1-Person AI Business In 30 Days

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]So, I actually have my own oneperson AI business that earns me passive income every day. And here's the thing, creating this business wasn't about luck. Instead, I created it by utilizing a simple four-step framework, which I think most people can follow. And so, in this video, I'm going to share what my exact framework is so that you can copy it and build your own profitable oneperson AI business in the next 30 days. So, let's jump straight into it then with step one, create a low competition business plan. And this is probably the most important yet underrated step because if you do this correctly, as I'll show you, getting traffic and doing marketing to your new business idea will be much, much easier.

[00:00:40]And to explain why, let me show you what my oneperson business is and how it works. So, you see, one day I was scrolling on Etsy and I was looking for clever, cute clothes themed around specific dog breeds like huskys that I could give as a gift. But I was pretty disappointed. While cute, clever, generic dog themed clothes existed, most of the clothes themed around specific dog breeds like huskys kind of sucked.

[00:01:03]Basically, I realized that there was this a gap in the market. If I wanted to buy these clothes, chances are others did, too. So, I used AI tools to help me come up with cute, clever slogans and ideas for dog breed specific clothing prints. And then I came to the most popular print on demand apps, Printify and Printful. These let you customize blank products that they have in their cataloges by uploading your own images and designs onto them. And so I did this and I put my print on demand clothes for sale on Etsy for a markup price. And I used AI to optimize my listings for free search traffic. And because my designs were actually cute and clever with the help of AI, Etsy started ranking my listings within 2 weeks, sending me free traffic and sales. And it's pretty cool because now each time a customer buys a product from me, the print on demand shop prints my design onto the product, packages it up, and ships it out to the customer. I pay the wholesale price for the product and keep my markup prices profit. It's pretty much automated now, which has let me scale it up. But here's the thing, right? It was so much easier for me to get traffic and sales to my new business because of the fact that it had basically no good competitors. And this honestly applies to any type of business that you might want to start.

[00:02:13]For example, I recently made this tutorial on this channel showing how people are making money by vibe coding simple, boring utility websites like niche calculators and converters with AI. They then get free traffic by ranking them in Google search results and monetize them with Google ads. Now, most people who see this would go, "Oh, that's cool. I'll just copy someone else's profitable website." And so, they go ahead, they do that, and then they wonder why their copycat website is getting no traffic. But that's not what I did. In my tutorial, I came to Google and searched for something that I had always wanted, an international clothing size converter tool. And while Google found websites with international clothing size charts, there were no converters. So, I knew then I'd stumbled on a low competition idea. So, I vibe coded it together with AI since I knew that if I made this, then mine would be the only converter, which means that it could rank much faster in Google search engine for related keywords. And I'll tell you what, sometimes the very best low competition business ideas aren't unique or original at all. Nope. Let's say, for example, you decided to start an agency offering services to businesses. And well, you decided to specialize in creating AI customer service chat bots for local businesses.

[00:03:27]Well, that is not new or original. There are thousands of people across the world selling this exact same service. But often times people like to work with someone local that they can actually meet in person. So if you're one of, if not the only person in your local town selling the service to local businesses, then it will be much easier to get clients because within your local area, this is a low competition idea, even if other people around the world are doing it, too. And this brings me onto a bonus tip, which is this. The easiest way to pick a low competition business idea is to solve a problem someone is having.

[00:04:04]Because you think about it, right? If someone is currently having a problem, then that means that obviously there is nobody solving their problem. Otherwise, they wouldn't be having a problem, would they? So, identifying problems to solve and then building a business idea around it is kind of a cheat code for coming up with a low competition business idea.

[00:04:23]So, of course, for me, my print on demand clothing store solved a problem I was having. I wanted better dog breed specific clothes to be able to give as gifts, so I made them. So, that's one way that you can identify a problem to solve. You can think about a problem that you yourself are having and then build a business to solve it. But, of course, for a lot of people watching, there is a good chance that you don't have any problems right now that you want solved. And if so, that's fine. You can just ask others. You can, for example, ask your friends and family if there are any products, content, or services that they want. And you could even go to local business meetups in your area if you want to start a service agency. And you could ask local businesses, hey, what service do you want? What service do you need? Then create an agency that sells a service that solves the problems they are having. And you could even get your favorite AI chatbot to help you. Turn on research mode when using it and get it to run a full deep research report looking for online discussions from people in different industries that are having specific problems that you could potentially solve. So, for example, I use Claude's research tool to search for online discussions from trade contractors like plumbers or electricians to identify specific problems that people in this industry are having. Because chances are, if trade contractors online are complaining about these problems, then chances are plumbers and electricians and your local area will be having these same problems too. You know, using this tool takes up quite a lot of your usage tokens, but considering how important this step is, I think the research report it made for me was well worth it. So then, let's now move on to step two, which is this.

[00:06:00]Build out your custom AI tool workflow.

[00:06:02]You know, it's kind of crazy, but a recent study showed that about 90% of AI users use Chat GPT plus just one other tool occasionally, and that's it. So, you think about it, right? if you're willing to use multiple tools to achieve the very best result. That alone puts you in the top 10% of AI users already.

[00:06:20]So, here's what you want to do now that you have your low competition business idea. Break it into tasks. So, for me, this is the task workflow that I need to do to make my clothing designs. Then, research and slot in the best up-to-date AI tools. So, this is what my custom AI tool workflow looks like for my oneperson AI print on demand business.

[00:06:40]And here's how it works in practice.

[00:06:42]First, I use AI chat bots like Claude, ChatGBT, or Gemini to help me brainstorm and come up with any slogans that I might want to use within my clothing designs. So, for example, you can see Claude came up with a pretty funny pun for a French bulldog picture. Pardon my French. Then, next, these days, for any images I want to use within my designs, I will use Google's nano banana image generator to make them. And I'll usually use version two included for free within Gemini. Then next after that, I'll use Canva, an AI powered graphics app to actually edit my designs together. I'll upload my image that I've generated into Canva and use the AI background remover tool to isolate the image on a transparent background and use their AI upscaler tool to upscale it into high resolution. Then I'll add any elements to it such as text to finish off my design. And then that's it. It's ready to be exported and sold onto whatever print on demand product I want. But of course, the next question you're probably having is, "Okay, that's a cool AI workflow you have there, but what about me? How do I make my own workflow?" For example, let's say that you've decided, you know what? I'm going to instead start an agency that creates AI agent secretaries. These AI secretaries will be targeted at local trade contractors like plumbers and electricians. The AI secretaries will manage their phone, messages, and emails. Well, what you can do is come to your favorite AI chatbot and make sure that you have thinking mode or extended reasoning mode turned on and tell it what your new business idea is and ask it to break it down into different tasks such as how you can complete it or run it. You can see here that I use Claude and it actually picked the best AI tools for me to use in my workflow which was super convenient. So then let's now move on to step three, which is to pick at least one AI traffic algorithm to piggy back off of to bring in free traffic, customers, and clients. Yep. A lot of the time people will say, "Okay, by creating a product or a service, that's the easy part. The hard part, they say, is marketing." And I kind of disagree with this because you think about it, right? If you actually did step one, which is picking a low competition business idea, then getting traffic can be pretty easy. And to explain why, let me explain my method that I used to bring traffic and the initial sales into my new AI print on demand clothing store. So, of course, as I said earlier, I sell these clothes on Etsy, which means this is where I primarily get my traffic. And there are two main ways people find my items to buy on Etsy. One way is they do a search for specific products and browse through the search results. Or secondly, Etsy's website and homepage has a for you page built into it, which recommends products to you that it thinks that you might like and want to buy. And all of these products Etsy chooses are picked through their AI powered algorithm. This algorithm analyzes all products that get uploaded and released onto it, even products from brand new Etsy stores. The algorithm analyzes your product page data and figures out which of the customers searching through their products and browsing through their homepage or their for you page might like to buy your products. The algorithm will then take your product and put it in front of a small group of test customers on these pages to see if they like it. This process is called test impressions. And if the test does well and the product converts into clicks, sales, and engagement from this test group, the algorithm will expand your product's reach, keep showing it to more and more customers. Which is why within 2 weeks, even on a brand new Etsy store, I'd already gained my first two sales, which then snowballed into more. So, you think about it, right? Because I was choosing to piggy back off of the Etsy algorithm for this, then that meant then that I had to do two things. One, I needed to be able to take my products and optimize them for the AI algorithm recommendation so that it could figure out who best to test my products with. And two, I needed to create a product that would actually convert and sell when the AI algorithm put it in front of these customers.

[00:10:31]Which is exactly why, if you think about it, picking a low competition business idea to start is actually a bit of a cheat code to get easy traffic and sales. Especially if your new business idea is solving a problem that other people aren't solving or they're not solving very well. Because if your product, service, or content is placed in front of your target audience who is having that problem, then chances are they'll click on it because they already want it. It's a powerful, effective free traffic strategy. So, what you now need to do is to pick at least one AI powered traffic algorithm to piggy back off of for your new business venture. All of the major social media websites, marketplaces, search engines, and content platforms have this exact same AI powered algorithm, which tests all new products or content uploaded to them with test impressions. So, if you're running a service agency, you might pick to focus on posting content to LinkedIn since that's where lots of business owners hang out. Or if your new business idea is you're going to be selling ebooks, then you might pick Amazon, the number one online marketplace for buying and selling ebooks. Or if you're going to be creating a video content business, you might pick YouTube, Tik Tok, or Instagram. Or if you're going to be vibe coding tools and apps, you might pick Google. Or potentially, you might also pick X.com, where lots of people interested in new apps and tools hang out. And if you need help picking a platform to piggy back off of, you can always ask an AI to help you pick one by describing what your new business idea is. And you can use any AI chatbot that you prefer for this. I like Gord right now, so I use that. But they should all be able to help you brainstorm the answer to this just fine. But of course, I'm sure a lot of people are now thinking, "Okay, Sarah, but how do I now actually optimize my products for an AI traffic algorithm?" And that's a good question. And I'll answer how I do that personally shortly. But first, a quick word from today's sponsor, me. Yep.

[00:12:23]Because you see, as my longtime subscribers know, I hate shady YouTube sponsors. So, if I fail to find a sponsor that I trust, I just sponsor a video myself. And since I failed to find one for this video, I'm just sponsoring again myself to let you know that if you'd like to learn even more about my print on demand Etsy stores, I have lots of other case studies on this channel.

[00:12:43]So, if you haven't seen those, I'll link to them in the description. Plus, in addition, I have a free ebook. My ebook shares a six-step process that I followed to both start and grow my one person AI print on demand business. So, if you want to download my ebook for free, I will include a link to download it in the video description. Plus, I also have my step-by-step video course called the Ecom Clubhouse. Inside, I share my exact AO tool workflows and prompts that I used and am using in my business. If you're interested in seeing if this is right for you, I'll also include a link to it in the description.

[00:13:16]And as a bonus, if anyone signs up for my free ebook today, I will give all new readers a special optional onetime coupon that lets you join and access to Ecom Clubhouse for 7 days for just $1.

[00:13:28]But yes, sponsorship over. Now, back to the video and on to step four, which is to create a traffic optimization AI workflow. So earlier back in step two, we created a custom AI tool workflow to help us run our oneperson business. And now we're going to create a second workflow, but this time it's going to be focused on how we're going to use AI tools to market and get traffic to our new business. So here's what you're going to do. You're going to take the website that you picked to piggy back off of in step three and build out a custom task workflow that outlines the steps you'll need to take when posting content or products to it to optimize it for their AI traffic algorithm. And then after that, you'll again need to go through and pick the best AI tools to complete each step like I did here for my workflow. And here's what it actually looks like in practice. First, when I come up with any new clothing idea, I come to the AO powered search engine, Perplexity, and I turn on the deep research function, and I get it to do a search on Etsy for other listings in a similar niche to see what sorts of keywords that they are using in their listings. And I get it to prepare a keyword research report for me, which I download. Then, next, I'll come to Chat GPT. I find that Chat GPT is still the best at drafting product listings to be optimized for AI search and recommendation algorithms. It isn't the best at writing, but it is the best at creating optimized blog posts, content pieces, product listings, things like that. So, what I'll do is I'll give chat GPT my keyword research report that I prepared with perplexity and get it to create an optimized product listing for me. And then I'll come to Claude and I will use it to polish and tidy up the product description. Because while chat GPT is better than Claude at creating content and product listings that contain keywords optimized for what AI algorithms want, Claude is much better at writing in a natural way. So I'll get Claude to polish and turn the optimized content into a nice public-f facing description and then that's it. The product is ready to be posted on Etsy along with the title, description, and keywords that are optimizing it for what the AI recommendation algorithm wants.

[00:15:28]Nice. So of course that is my personal workflow. But of course the next question is this. What should your workflow be? And that's a good question.

[00:15:37]So let's say again for example you had decided to start a local agency to sell a service that local businesses needed and you'd picked LinkedIn as your website to piggy back off of instead.

[00:15:47]Well, you can use a method that is very similar to the method we did when we created a custom AI workflow back in step two. Come and ask an AI chatbot of choice with a stinky mode turned on to help you brainstorm your task workflow.

[00:16:01]Tell it what website you picked to piggy back off of and get it to help you plan out how to optimize your posts step by step. So for me, Claude came up with this 10-step optimization process for optimizing posts on LinkedIn for maximum organic reach, which I then condensed into this more simplified workflow here by combining complimentary steps together. And then I switched in the current best AI tools to complete my workflow. So yeah, it was by using this four-step framework that I was able to go from idea to my first sale in less than 30 days in my own oneperson AI business. So I hope that this video has helped you. And if you would like to learn about even more ways that people are using AI tools to start online businesses, be sure to watch my next video here on screen. And I will see you in the next video.