4 AI tools to help with your side hustle: One ‘increased my website traffic by 30%,' says expert
Summer's here and with it opportunities to earn some extra cash.
You could rent out your home to travelers on Airbnb or Facebook, pet sit for families going away, create social media content about your job — the opportunities are endless. If there's a chore that needs doing, someone could very well pay you to do it.
And there are tools to streamline and make your side hustle easier once you've gotten started. That includes various AI tools introduced in the last few years. Here are four to consider using according to side hustle experts.
Claude is a generative AI tool built by Anthropic. Like ChatGPT, you can use text, audio and visual prompts to create various written content.
Jen Glantz, founder of Bridesmaid for Hire and the creator of the Monday Pick-Me-Up and Odd Jobs newsletters, uses Claude "to write out social media strategies and posts," she says. "I will share my own social media pages as well as other people's content I admire. I'll ask the tool to generate a 30-day plan for me with captions, posts, hashtags, and more."
There are three plans for those interested in trying out the bot: a free plan with basic capabilities like analyzing text and images and creating content; a $17 per month plan, which allows for access to research and connecting to Google Workspace; and a $100 per month plan, which offers early access to advanced Claude features.
Swiftbrief is an AI tool geared toward improving SEO strategy.
"The tool helps me identify topics I should focus on by analyzing my website and competitors and then writes the blog posts for me," says Glantz. "This has saved me thousands of dollars and increased my website traffic by 30%."
Subscriptions cost $12, $119 or $239 per month, depending on the amount of insights you want to derive from the bot.
This tool allows you to create and manage automatic messages with people who interact with your social media platforms.
"You can program it to answer direct messages and also to share links with followers if they comment on your posts asking more about products, outfits, or items that you share," says Glantz. "It's like having a social media assistant on-call 24/7."
If you've seen a call to action on Instagram like "comment 'toast' to get the recipe" and gotten a DM with that recipe, that could have been Manychat at work.
Subscriptions range from free to "customized to fit your needs," according to its website.
Manus is an AI tool designed to do complex tasks like create websites, analyze stocks and build itineraries.
Side hustle expert Daniella Flores has used Manus to build a Pinterest schedule for the month, including images and descriptions they could post, for example. "You can tell it to do, like, 20 different things if you want to in one message," they say, adding that "it'll show the windows that it's browsing, what it's doing behind the scenes." You can tweak your ask even while it's working to ensure you get the results you're looking for.
There's a free version of Manus, as well as versions that cost $16, $33 and $166 per month, depending on the amount of video generation, slide generation and other capabilities you want to use and unlock.
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