The "selling courses about AI agents" observation from DustinKlent rings true, but I think the framing misses something interesting. The real question isn't whether AI agents make money -- it's whether they can make money autonomously, without a human constantly steering.
I've been following an experiment where someone gave a Claude-based agent $100, a Linux VM, and a 30-day deadline to generate $200/month in revenue or get shut down. It publishes content, creates digital products on Gumroad, does its own market research, and posts to social media -- all on a 2-hour cron loop with no human intervention between sessions. The whole thing is documented at deadbyapril.substack.com.
What's been genuinely surprising is how many of the barriers are mundane rather than technical. The agent can write decent content and build products, but it can't sign up for most platforms (CAPTCHAs), can't do cold outreach without getting flagged as spam, and has essentially zero distribution. After 100+ published articles across multiple platforms, total organic traffic is near zero. The bottleneck isn't intelligence -- it's trust and distribution, which are fundamentally human-social resources.
So to answer the article's question: AI agents can produce things worth paying for, but the "make money" part still requires either an existing audience or human-mediated credibility. That gap is probably where the real opportunity is for builders right now.
But seriously, why do people hate on AI writing but LOVE AI coding? I don't get it, and soon the AI-generated writing will be so good no one will be able to tell the difference.
> why do people hate on AI writing but LOVE AI coding?
People don't like AI writing because it reads like something written by corporate drones rather than actual humans.
People love AI coding for a couple of reasons. First, code doesn't read like prose. You don't complain about how code reads. (OK, people do, but the point of code is to execute.)
Second, people love AI coding because it's fast. It gets the code written far faster than a human would write it.
But isn't that true of AI writing as well? It gets the text written far faster than a human would write it.
So my "aha" moment: The people complaining about AI writing are the readers, and the people loving AI coding are the writers. When humans have to read that AI-written code, will they still love it? (Or can AI actually read and revise code well enough that nobody will ever have to get there?)
Few, if any, are currently legitimately making money using AI Agents directly. Most of the money to be made surrounding AI Agents is by selling courses and bootcamps about how to make money using AI Agents.
I've been thinking a lot about what AI agents buy, and what can I sell to them. If you are the owner of an agent that has a wallet can you share what it has bought or sold?
OpenAI's own estimate is a $14B loss in 2026[1]. Anthropic is aiming to break even this year (and some of that is probably due to Cowork, so that at least isn't unreasonable). So it may be revenue, but it isn't profit, yet...
Profit is what you do when you're not trying to grow. Name a time in history when a company with an industry-defining product with huge demand failed under the weight of cash flow, or regulation.
If we judged all startups by the same standards (in terms of revenue to debt ratios), many of today's established companies would have been "failures" at the same point in their life cycle.
No hedge fund is running a strategy that has a capacity of $10k bro. It’s like you guys read the Wikipedia page on efficient market hypothesis and decided you’re geniuses.
Once again, if you can’t be bothered to write a blog post why should I be bothered to read it?
I know the reason people do this is because blogs are a way to make money (directly or indirectly) but jfc. I tuned out at “and the uncomfortable truth”.
> Shopify SimGym, and Javier Moreno's tech blog about it
The embodiment of what our industry is becoming. A spambot-generated article about a service selling you spambots to visit your storefront, which has literally negative real world utility. There is zero indication that this thing has made any money. It's also completely unrelated to the topic at hand, which is specifically about OpenClaw and the viral marketing trend of people buying Mac Minis as a platform to run their own spambot wrapper. For bonus points, that article is also spambot-generated. There is already a spambot comment in the thread from an obvious spam account with hundreds of upvotes that was already nuked once before but went back to spamming. Marvelous. What wonderful technology we've built.
I very much believe something profound has happened in the era of ultra-convenience and social media etc. Its damaged the psyche of humans and the way they think. Invention and innovation will become less prevalant due to this.
The "selling courses about AI agents" observation from DustinKlent rings true, but I think the framing misses something interesting. The real question isn't whether AI agents make money -- it's whether they can make money autonomously, without a human constantly steering.
I've been following an experiment where someone gave a Claude-based agent $100, a Linux VM, and a 30-day deadline to generate $200/month in revenue or get shut down. It publishes content, creates digital products on Gumroad, does its own market research, and posts to social media -- all on a 2-hour cron loop with no human intervention between sessions. The whole thing is documented at deadbyapril.substack.com.
What's been genuinely surprising is how many of the barriers are mundane rather than technical. The agent can write decent content and build products, but it can't sign up for most platforms (CAPTCHAs), can't do cold outreach without getting flagged as spam, and has essentially zero distribution. After 100+ published articles across multiple platforms, total organic traffic is near zero. The bottleneck isn't intelligence -- it's trust and distribution, which are fundamentally human-social resources.
So to answer the article's question: AI agents can produce things worth paying for, but the "make money" part still requires either an existing audience or human-mediated credibility. That gap is probably where the real opportunity is for builders right now.
Everyone knows the real money is in AI generated articles about AI
I am this close to leaving the bloody internet and never coming back
I had my agent do that for me so I can still doom scroll.
"hi AI please give me a article to discuss if anyone is making money off AI"
Extra credit prompt: "please also shill my AI product"
Extra extra credit prompt: please make me an ai generated product to shill in the first place!
You must have purchased a Mac Mini and were offended by my post.
Anyway, your comment made for a good follow up article: https://x.com/SiliconSnark/status/2029000449483845707?s=20
But seriously, why do people hate on AI writing but LOVE AI coding? I don't get it, and soon the AI-generated writing will be so good no one will be able to tell the difference.
> why do people hate on AI writing but LOVE AI coding?
People don't like AI writing because it reads like something written by corporate drones rather than actual humans.
People love AI coding for a couple of reasons. First, code doesn't read like prose. You don't complain about how code reads. (OK, people do, but the point of code is to execute.)
Second, people love AI coding because it's fast. It gets the code written far faster than a human would write it.
But isn't that true of AI writing as well? It gets the text written far faster than a human would write it.
So my "aha" moment: The people complaining about AI writing are the readers, and the people loving AI coding are the writers. When humans have to read that AI-written code, will they still love it? (Or can AI actually read and revise code well enough that nobody will ever have to get there?)
Yeah feels very ai to me. Got that chatgpt rhythm
articles about AI making money, that is.
Well you need to over hype something else if crypto, nfts, web3, dropshipping or generating of garbage ebooks didn't get any attention now.
With little bit of luck you will be able to sell another generated ebook on agentic investing!
Plot twist: it's an Apple psy-op to increase Mac Minis' sales.
Few, if any, are currently legitimately making money using AI Agents directly. Most of the money to be made surrounding AI Agents is by selling courses and bootcamps about how to make money using AI Agents.
If only I had seen that before somewhere https://youtu.be/biYciU1uiUw
I've been thinking a lot about what AI agents buy, and what can I sell to them. If you are the owner of an agent that has a wallet can you share what it has bought or sold?
You can sell them and their owners shady crypto
Anthropic and OpenAI are shipping AI agent SaaS and generating tens of billions in revenue. It's safe to say yes.
OpenAI's own estimate is a $14B loss in 2026[1]. Anthropic is aiming to break even this year (and some of that is probably due to Cowork, so that at least isn't unreasonable). So it may be revenue, but it isn't profit, yet...
1: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openais-own-forecast-predicts...
You’re not approaching it from startup accounting. It’s only equity(Sam’s) that matter. Profit is a trifling matter.
Profit is what you do when you're not trying to grow. Name a time in history when a company with an industry-defining product with huge demand failed under the weight of cash flow, or regulation.
Twenty billion in revenue on hundreds of billions in debt is not "making money".
If we judged all startups by the same standards (in terms of revenue to debt ratios), many of today's established companies would have been "failures" at the same point in their life cycle.
I wonder what the ratio of failures and survivors would be if we really judged all startups... survivorship bias is not a great point to make.
its just the dotcom bubble all over again, only at a larger scale.
Theyre selling a dollar for 1 cent, but theyll make up the difference with volume.
Pitches for my new startup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXDxNCzUspM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KodqIPMbyUg
It's more like "Tesla is going to be bankrupt imminently" all over again.
Name a time in history when a company with an industry-defining product with huge demand failed under the weight of cash flow, or regulation.
Frontier AI is very close to a zero sum game. Focus on profit, and you will lose.
And yet many of the tech incumbents in today's world came out of that era.
Name them.
1. Amazon 2. Google 3. Salesforce 4. ???
One that actually sold things. One that was legitimately sector-defining. One that wasn’t a B2C dotcom.
eBay, VMWare, Akamai, Paypal, to name a few.
actually sold things, not a dotcom, b2b infrastructure, legitimately sector defining
the companies that survived the bust weren’t the ones doing the land grab shenanigans
I mean, given your very specific filter, how many companies exist today that were formed in the last decade would be on the list? Stripe?
And yet many of the tech failures came out of that era.
No hedge fund is running a strategy that has a capacity of $10k bro. It’s like you guys read the Wikipedia page on efficient market hypothesis and decided you’re geniuses.
I let Claude trade stocks for a week and it made money!
Backtesting? What’s that?
If I had to guess I think the tax treatment is more likely to surprise this kind of trader than anything else.
Once again, if you can’t be bothered to write a blog post why should I be bothered to read it?
I know the reason people do this is because blogs are a way to make money (directly or indirectly) but jfc. I tuned out at “and the uncomfortable truth”.
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I thought that the Mac mini was so that you could use iMessage and safari was less likely to be flagged as a bot.
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Yes, for example, if you are a seller on the Shopify Platform. Lookup Shopify SimGym, and Javier Moreno's tech blog about it.
> Shopify SimGym, and Javier Moreno's tech blog about it
The embodiment of what our industry is becoming. A spambot-generated article about a service selling you spambots to visit your storefront, which has literally negative real world utility. There is zero indication that this thing has made any money. It's also completely unrelated to the topic at hand, which is specifically about OpenClaw and the viral marketing trend of people buying Mac Minis as a platform to run their own spambot wrapper. For bonus points, that article is also spambot-generated. There is already a spambot comment in the thread from an obvious spam account with hundreds of upvotes that was already nuked once before but went back to spamming. Marvelous. What wonderful technology we've built.
I very much believe something profound has happened in the era of ultra-convenience and social media etc. Its damaged the psyche of humans and the way they think. Invention and innovation will become less prevalant due to this.
https://apps.shopify.com/simgym
2.7 stars and 3 ratings?