AI Guides › Workbench
By Nigel Guy · 7 min read
The usual way to "make money with AI tools" is to subscribe to five of them, play with all five, and wait for income to appear. It feels like progress because the tools are impressive. Nobody pays you for owning a subscription, though. They pay for a finished thing that saves them time: a deck, a recording, a template, a data pull, a workflow that runs.
The rule: pick one tool, name the one deliverable a buyer receives, fix a price before you start, and have a human check it before it leaves your hands.
None of these tools earns money by itself, and nothing below is a promise of income. Each is a way to produce something faster. Whether anyone buys it depends on you finding a buyer, which usually means people you already know or a small local business you can message directly. You do not need an audience, but you do need to ask.
Prices are as listed on vendor pages when checked on 4 October 2026. They change often, so check the current page, and check the £ price at checkout because the vendor's own conversion will differ from mine.
| Tool | Deliverable you sell | Cost at time of writing | Best for | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude or ChatGPT | Written services: product descriptions, proposals, CV rewrites, email sequences | Claude Pro is $20 a month (about £16 at time of writing); ChatGPT Plus is also commonly listed at $20 a month | Anyone who can judge good writing in a niche they know | Generic output sells for nothing; your editing is the product |
| Gamma | Pitch decks, one-page documents, simple webpages | Free plan has 400 one-off starter credits; Plus about $8 a seat a month (about £6), Pro about $18 (about £14) | Small businesses with notes but no slides | Credits run out; a deck still needs facts you have checked |
| ElevenLabs | Voiceovers for explainers, audio versions of articles | Free is $0 with no commercial use; Starter $6 a month (about £5) and up includes commercial use; Creator $11 (about £9) | Short narration for people who will not record themselves | Licence terms, and consent if a real person's voice is involved |
| Canva (Magic Studio) | Editable templates sold as template links | Free tier exists; check the Pro price at checkout | Social post packs, menus, price lists | Licensing limits on what you can resell |
| Apify or Zapier | Data pulls or a small workflow on retainer | Apify Free includes $5 of usage (about £4), Starter $19 a month (about £15); Zapier Free is 100 tasks a month, Professional $19.99 a month billed yearly (about £16) or $29.99 monthly (about £23) | Repeating admin a client does by hand | Maintenance never ends; scraping has legal limits |
Choose one narrow service and one buyer, for example "rewrite your five best-selling product descriptions in a consistent voice". Ask for the buyer's real inputs first, then draft, then edit hard.
You are a careful UK copywriter working for a small online shop. Context: [BUSINESS_AND_PRODUCT_RANGE]. Audience: [CUSTOMER_TYPE]. Tone: [THREE_TONE_WORDS].
Rewrite the product description below. A good result is under [WORD_LIMIT] words, uses only facts I provide, and leads with the benefit the customer cares about.
Product facts: [FACTS_FROM_THE_OWNER]
Current description: [CURRENT_TEXT]
Rules: British English. Do not invent features, materials, dates, awards or reviews. If a fact you need is missing, ask me before writing. Give two versions, then a one-line note on which claims I should confirm with the owner.
Before answering, check that every claim in your text appears in the facts above.
Fill in the business, tone and the owner's real facts. The "ask before writing" line matters: it is what stops invented product claims reaching a customer.
Gamma turns an outline into slides and documents. Its Free plan is a one-off pot of starter credits that does not refresh, so test on your own material before promising a client anything. Paid plans give monthly credits, per Gamma's help centre.
Your deliverable is a deck built from the client's notes, then trimmed by you. Do not sell what comes out of the first generation.
You are a presentation editor. I will give you the client's notes. Produce a slide-by-slide outline for [AUDIENCE] to support a [LENGTH]-minute talk about [TOPIC], with the decision we want from them being [DECISION].
Per slide: a headline that states the point, up to three short bullets, and one line saying what evidence the client must supply. Do not make up figures; mark any gap as [NEEDS FIGURE]. Ask me for anything essential that is missing before you start. Check that each slide earns its place by supporting the decision.
Notes: [CLIENT_NOTES]
Paste the outline into Gamma, then replace every [NEEDS FIGURE] with a verified number or delete the claim.
Typical jobs: a 90-second explainer voiceover, or audio versions of a business's blog posts. The Free plan does not include commercial use, so for paid client work you need a paid plan (Starter and above at time of writing). Read the current terms and prohibited-use policy before you sell anything.
Use stock voices, or your own. Do not clone anyone's voice without their clear written permission, and do not imitate public figures. Before you use any script, have Claude tidy it for speech:
Edit this script for spoken delivery by a single narrator. Keep the meaning and every fact unchanged. Shorten long sentences, spell out numbers and abbreviations the way they should be said, and mark pauses with a new line. Ask me if any term's pronunciation is unclear. Script: [SCRIPT]
Always listen to the full recording for mispronounced names before delivery.
You make an editable design, such as a 30-day social post pack for [NICHE], and sell the link. Canva's help centre says its Content License allows selling templates, but templates containing Pro content can only be sold as Canva template links, and you cannot resell Canva content on a standalone basis or use it to make your own stock content. Read the current licence page before listing anything. Keep the template original: your own layout and text, not a repackaged stock element.
Apify runs ready-made scrapers ("Actors") billed in compute units; Zapier connects apps with automated workflows. A retainer might be "every Monday, collect competitor prices into a sheet" or "when a form is submitted, add a row and send a confirmation".
Scope it before you build:
You are an automation consultant. Help me scope a small recurring job for a client.
Client's current manual process: [PROCESS]. Apps they already use: [APPS]. Frequency: [HOW_OFTEN].
Output: a numbered workflow (trigger, steps, result), the data involved, what could break, what a human must still approve, and a rough monthly running cost from the vendors' current pricing pages.
Ask me for anything missing. Flag any step that involves personal data or scraping a site whose terms may forbid it.
Charge a fixed setup fee plus a monthly check, because things break when sites change.
Start with the tool whose output you can already judge. If you can spot a bad paragraph, begin with writing. If you have an eye for layout, begin with Gamma or Canva. If you are comfortable with spreadsheets, try Zapier. Pay for one month of one plan, deliver one paid job, then decide.