AI Guides › Step-by-step guides
By Nigel Guy · 7 min read
Most "I made £100,000 in 90 days with AI" posts sell you the challenge: the countdown, the screenshots, the feeling of momentum. What they rarely hand over is the working part, which is usually dull: one way of finding people to contact, one way of handling incoming offers, and one price that was wrong. We could not verify any specific 90-day revenue claim from the posts that prompted this guide, so this is not a recreation of anyone's results. It is the repeatable version: three small systems, each with an AI assistant doing the drafting and you doing the sending, and a ledger that tells you within weeks whether any of it earns.
The rule: an AI agent drafts and sorts, you approve and send, and every system gets a line in a ledger that shows pounds in, not activity.
You need a product or service you already sell (even one), a list of the people who might buy it, and an email account you control. Cost at time of writing:
| Item | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Pro | $20 a month, about £16 at time of writing | Check the £ price at checkout; see the Claude plans article |
| Claude Max (optional) | $100 or $200 a month, about £80 or £160 at time of writing | Higher usage limits only; you do not need it to start |
| A spreadsheet | Free | Google Sheets or Excel |
Start on the cheapest paid plan. Upgrade only when you hit usage limits, not before.
Create a spreadsheet with one row per system and these columns: System, Started, Messages sent, Replies, Calls or deals, £ received, £ spent, Next review date. Add three rows: Outreach, Brand deals, Repriced product. This is the named mechanism, the Three-Row Ledger. Fill "£ received" only with money actually in your account. A signed proposal is not a pound.
The mistake is asking an AI to send hundreds of messages. Ask it to draft twenty good ones instead.
You are an outreach editor for a small UK business. My offer: [YOUR_OFFER_IN_TWO_SENTENCES]. My ideal customer: [CUSTOMER_TYPE]. Price range: [PRICE_IN_GBP].
Goal: a short first email for each contact below that a busy person could answer with one line. A good result is under 90 words, names one specific reason I am writing to that person, asks one small question, and contains no flattery.
Contacts, each with a note on why they fit:
[CONTACT_LIST]
Steps: (1) For each contact, draft the email. (2) Mark any contact where my note is too thin to personalise and ask me for more instead of inventing detail. (3) Add a one-line unsubscribe sentence: "[MY_UNSUBSCRIBE_LINE]".
Constraints: do not claim results, testimonials or numbers I have not given you. Do not state facts about a person or company that are not in my notes. British English. No emoji.
Before you answer, check each draft for an invented fact, a hard sell, or more than one question, and fix it.
Fill in: your offer, customer type, price, the contact list and your opt-out line.
UK rule to know: under PECR, you may email companies and other corporate bodies without prior consent, but sole traders and ordinary partnerships are treated as individuals and need consent or an existing-customer relationship. You must not hide your identity and must give a valid address for opting out, per the ICO's email marketing guidance. Keep a do-not-contact list.
This one is for people with an audience. The agent does not negotiate; it sorts inbound offers so you answer the good ones quickly.
You are an assistant helping a UK creator triage sponsorship enquiries. My audience: [AUDIENCE_DESCRIPTION]. My minimum fee: £[MINIMUM_FEE]. Things I will never promote: [EXCLUSIONS]. Deliverables I offer: [DELIVERABLES].
For each enquiry I paste below, produce a table row with: brand, what they want, offered fee, fit (good, maybe, no), red flags, and what is missing. Then draft a two-paragraph reply: a polite yes with my rate and terms, a request for the missing details, or a decline.
Constraints: never agree a fee or date on my behalf. Do not invent facts about the brand. If the enquiry mentions payment only in free product or "exposure", flag it. If you cannot judge fit from what I gave you, ask me.
Self-check before answering: does every reply stay at or above my minimum, and are all unknowns listed as questions?
Enquiries:
[PASTED_ENQUIRIES]
Fill in: audience, minimum fee, exclusions, deliverables and the pasted emails. Paid partnerships must be labelled clearly as advertising; read the ASA influencer guide before your first deal.
Pick one product you already sell and change one price, once. Use this prompt to prepare, not to decide.
You are a pricing analyst for a small UK seller. Product: [PRODUCT_AND_WHAT_IT_INCLUDES]. Current price: £[CURRENT_PRICE]. Sales in the last [PERIOD]: [UNITS_SOLD]. My costs per sale: £[COST_PER_SALE]. Comparable offers I have found: [COMPARABLES_WITH_PRICES].
Goal: three candidate prices with the reasoning for each, the sales volume I would need at each price to earn at least what I earn now, and one low-risk way to test the change.
Constraints: use only the numbers I gave you. If a figure is missing, ask for it. Do not predict demand as fact; give break-even volumes instead.
Self-check: show the arithmetic for each break-even so I can verify it.
Fill in: product, current price, recent sales, costs and comparables. Then change the price on one page, leave it for a fixed period, and record units and pounds in the ledger.
If you use Claude Code, you can save each prompt as a subagent: a Markdown file with a name and description in its frontmatter, kept in ~/.claude/agents/ for all projects or .claude/agents/ for one. Restricting its tools field keeps a drafting agent from doing more than drafting. Details are in the subagents documentation. This is convenience, not a requirement; a saved prompt in a Claude Project does the same job.
At each review date, read only the ledger. A system is working if "£ received" exceeds "£ spent" including your subscription. After four weeks, a system with sends but no replies has a targeting or offer problem, not a volume problem. Fix that before adding more messages.