The Only 25 Ways to Make Money in 2026

Business Model Categorization
📌 The speaker outlines four buckets for making money online in the new era of AI: Trash, Easy ($5K–$10K/month), Medium ($10K–$50K/month), and Hard (millions).
🗑️ The Trash bucket includes activities like NFT flipping, crypto trading, MLMs, and basic data entry, which have zero income potential or risk high losses.
🚀 The core philosophy suggests focusing on opportunities that leverage high-income skills, business outcomes, or long-term asset building, especially given AI advancements.

The "Trash" Bucket (Avoid)
🚫 Activities like NFT flipping and crypto trading are marked as high risk or dead ends for most people without extreme skill or patience.
🤖 Tasks easily replaced by AI, such as basic captioning/subtitles and low-level data entry, are now obsolete for human income generation.
🛑 Businesses that rely primarily on recruiting rather than sales, like Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), are flagged as potential scams.
❓ To filter ideas, ask: Is AI replacing this? Is the industry shrinking? Is it easier to lose money than make money?

The "Easy" Bucket ($5K–$10K/Month)
🌟 This category is for beginners, aiming for first income within 30 to 60 days using simple execution skills.
🎬 Examples include basic short-form video editing (high demand due to creators), social media copywriting, and setting up AI chatbots for small businesses.
☎️ Setting up AI receptionists (e.g., using tools like your.com) to handle inbound calls and scheduling is a fast, paid opportunity.
✍️ Key strategy: Create an outcome-based offer that solves a customer's pain (saving time or making money) and offer a clear guarantee to reduce risk and create urgency (limiting slots to 3 or 5 clients).

The "Medium" Bucket ($10K–$50K/Month)
📈 This involves multi-skill work tied directly to real business outcomes like revenue and growth, with potential earnings within 3 to 12 months.
🔗 Success here requires shifting from selling time to selling outcome-based monthly retainers for predictable, recurring revenue.
🛠️ Opportunities include launching Automation Agencies, setting up LinkedIn growth systems powered by AI, or developing Micro SaaS products.
🎨 High-value skills remain crucial; for example, high-quality motion graphic designers who can leverage AI tools like After Effects are highly sought after as AI floods the market with low-quality content.

The "Hard" Bucket (Millions Potential)
🏗️ This bucket focuses on building assets or empires requiring systems, leadership, and 2 to 10+ years of commitment.
💰 A primary focus is building Software AI Products (like those built at Martell Ventures) which generate recurring revenue and high valuation multiples (10x to 50x revenue).
💡 Other pathways include investing in AI-first founders (gaining equity leverage), buying small businesses and applying AI automation (30% to 50% efficiency gains), or building a personal brand machine for deal flow and enterprise value.
📚 A valuable, overlooked asset is licensing AI Playbooks (system prompts) as intellectual property (IP) to other businesses.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ To succeed in the Medium or Hard buckets, you must systematize your service to sell an outcome, not your time, and layer AI to increase margins.
🛑 Avoid shiny object syndrome by committing to 1,000 days of focused execution on one strategy, as winners are defined by losing more often while staying in the game.
🤝 Building a small team slowly and strategically, avoiding headcount where AI can automate tasks, is vital for scaling successfully in the "Hard" bucket.
📢 Documenting your journey publicly acts as an accountability mechanism, significantly increasing the probability of staying committed.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Jan 26, 2026, 06:42 UTC