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💰 How I’d Make Money with Claude Before Everyone Starts Copying the Same Ideas

If everything depended on making money with AI, this is the strategy I’d follow. The biggest opportunities won’t stay open forever (just like SaaS years ago). So act fast.

Author

Neil Phan
July 30, 2026

TL;DR

The most practical way to make money with AI is to solve one valuable business problem and prove the result. Claude Opus 5 can help you find the right task, build a reliable workflow, and turn the outcome into a case study.

Start with a manual process that wastes time, creates errors, or slows a team down. Choose one clear metric before building anything, then test the workflow against real cases and keep human review where judgment is still needed.

The case study becomes your proof. You can use it to sell a paid audit, propose a new role at work, support a promotion request, or show employers what you can build.

Key points

  • Fact: The demo tested 15 support questions in one run.

  • Mistake: Don’t present demo results as verified business performance.

  • Takeaway: Sell the audit before promising a full system.

Introduction

A few years ago, SaaS was that hidden gem. You already missed that. So did I.

10 years ago, you could build a plain web tool, charge $30/mo, and ride it for a decade. That window stayed open long enough to grow into a market worth more than $300 billion a year.

Actually, AI Fire got there late too. We built USnap, an all-in-one AI tool. But finally, we shut it down. That's the part I want you to sit with. We had the audience and the skills, and we still landed a step behind.

The AI window is open right now. It closes the same way SaaS closed, probably faster. So before everyone runs the same playbook, here's the one I'd run today.

🤖 What’s stopping you from making money with AI?

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I. Two Paths, Depending on Your Situation

Before we get into the steps, pick your lane. The same four-step process below works either way, but the end goal is different:

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