Content and marketing businesses

Niche email newsletter monetized through sponsorships, paid subscriptions, referrals, and high-ticket offers

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — Make $500k/Year with One Email a Week

Build an owned audience around a specific interest or professional cohort, publish consistently, collect first-party subscriber data, and monetize the audience through several complementary revenue streams rather than relying only on subscriber volume.

Problem: Provides a simple, high-margin way to build an owned audience and turn a focused relationship with readers into revenue without needing a mass-market publication.

For: People with expertise, enthusiasm, or access to a defined niche audience, including local-interest publishers, fan communities, creators, consultants, and publishers serving professional groups such as CFOs, founders, or early employees.

Examples

• Big Desk Energy: a weekly newsletter for startup founders, early employees, and entrepreneurs with about 120,000 subscribers; it generated about $500,000 in annual revenue, with sponsorships, mastermind events, and Boost contributing to the total.

Multilingual AI voice-cloned voicemail service for realtors

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Laziest AI Side Hustle Anyone Can Start Right Now

Clone a realtor's voice and create personalized voicemail messages in multiple languages while preserving the realtor's voice, tone, and style. Package recurring multilingual voicemail production for real estate agents.

Problem: Realtors need to respond quickly and build trust with leads, but usually cannot leave personalized voicemails in languages other than English without using translation tools and a voice that sounds unlike them.

For: Realtors serving multilingual home buyers, especially in markets where more than half of home buyers may speak a language other than English at home.

Examples

• A realtor voicemail package can include 10 messages in Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Portuguese, with examples such as new-listing alerts and home-purchase anniversary messages.

Shared direct-mail postcard advertising business for local companies

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Simplest Side Hustle You Can Start Under $100

Sell exclusive advertising spaces on shared postcards, with one local business per category, then print and distribute the postcards to targeted local homes through USPS Every Door Direct Mail. The business earns advertising revenue while outsourcing printing and mailing.

Problem: Local businesses need affordable exposure to nearby homeowners, while shared direct mail lets several businesses split the cost of a local mailing. The operator solves the advertiser-acquisition and campaign-assembly problem without personally printing or delivering the cards.

For: Local businesses that serve homeowners, especially home cleaners, landscapers, lawn-care providers, dog-yard scooping services, junk haulers, carpet cleaners, window cleaners, plumbers, permanent holiday-lighting companies, real-estate businesses, bakeries, restaurants and other local businesses with relevant consumer offers.

Examples

• A plumber bought a $1,100 advertising space after about five messages.

Automated photo-to-cinematic Instagram Reel workflow for product, service, and real-estate businesses

Automate with Marc | AI Automation — Claude Cowork | Instagram Reels on Autopilot — Turn Photos into Cinematic Reels

A no-code workflow uses existing photos from Google Drive, generates image-to-video content, creates a caption, and posts the finished Reel to Instagram without manual video editing. The workflow can be adapted for other products, services, and social platforms.

Problem: Businesses have product, service, or property photos but lack video content or video-editing skills, making it difficult to produce consistent social-media Reels manually.

For: Real-estate businesses with listing photos but no video content, as well as product businesses, content creators, marketing teams, and social-media managers that want branded video content at scale.

Examples

• Paradise Homes Real Estate: A Claude Cowork project used a beach-house image to create and post a Reel for a new beachfront villa in Baja, California, Mexico; the Reel went live on Instagram with a generated caption describing the villa's luxury construction, ocean access, and golden-hour setting.

AI-assisted marketing asset production pipeline for creators and product brands

ManuAGI - AutoGPT Tutorials — Claude Created My Full AI Marketing Pipeline From One Prompt

Use Claude as the control layer and Higgsfield as the generation layer to turn a raw product idea into a coherent launch package of product images, campaign variations, and short videos without manually moving briefs and files between separate workflows.

Problem: AI can produce marketing plans and creative directions, but production is often fragmented across tools, making it difficult to maintain consistent product shape, materials, lighting, colors, and messaging across assets.

For: Creators and product teams launching a product that needs coordinated website, social, lifestyle, and video marketing assets.

Examples

• Northstar Audio: a premium wireless headphone brand for designers, developers, commuters, and people needing long periods of focused work; the workflow produced five still-image roles and three short videos for a launch package.

Niche content publishing supported by an automated creator-research system

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — Now is the Best Time to Make Money with Content (AI Tutorial)

Choose a niche, publish content inspired by successful creators, build an audience, and monetize it. An automation monitors selected YouTube channels, records new videos, and emails a consolidated research report so the creator does not have to search manually.

Problem: Finding fresh content ideas across multiple creator accounts every day is exhausting and can prevent creators from publishing consistently.

For: People who want to build an audience by consistently publishing content about a niche they are interested in.

Examples

• A healthy-recipe account's successful 5-minute protein breakfast: the transcript says it performed strongly, making it a candidate for creating an original version.

Faceless AI-generated YouTube channel

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Laziest AI Side Hustle Just Got Even Easier

Build and monetize a YouTube channel without appearing on camera or hiring a team by using Claude and Higgsfield to produce scripts, thumbnails, cinematic scenes, voiceovers, and assembled videos.

Problem: Reduces the time, expertise, and production cost required to create and test video content without appearing on camera.

For: Viewers interested in documentary, educational, entertainment, or technology content, especially in niches that pay well and suit AI-generated visuals.

Examples

• Wrestling documentary channels: the transcript describes watching a faceless channel with AI-generated scripts and clips because the content was entertaining despite being AI-generated.

Physical-gifting service that sends cakes to prospects to generate sales meetings

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — He Makes $4K/Day With This Weird Middleman Business

A business uses distinctive physical gifts, especially cakes, as an outbound sales channel. The gift cuts through email, cold calls, and direct messages, creates attention and reciprocity, and is followed by a sales conversation. The fulfillment layer sources cakes from local bakeries, negotiates pricing, coordinates deliveries, and tracks orders across locations.

Problem: Digital outreach is increasingly noisy and may be ignored by humans or filtered by AI agents. The service creates human attention and meetings through a physical, memorable interaction.

For: Companies selling high-value products or services where one new customer can justify the cost of a gift, including software companies, agencies, accountants, real estate brokers, and other businesses with revenue-tied sales budgets.

Examples

• A dentist-software company called Archie planned to send 1,000 cakes to dental offices across San Francisco, Florida, and Houston after a successful pizza campaign.

AI-generated niche news and SEO content site built around a fast-growing topic

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — OpenClaw is BOOMING! Do This to Profit

Acquire a topic-specific domain during a surge of interest, launch an AI-assisted news and explainer site, target the searches people use around the topic, and collect visitor email addresses for a newsletter audience.

Problem: Readers need accessible, timely explanations and news about a new topic, while the publisher needs to capture an audience rather than relying only on advertising.

For: People searching for news, explanations, guides, and monetization information about a rapidly growing technology or online platform.

Examples

• Moltbook News: a site about Moltbook that went live shortly before the recording and reportedly received 12 unique active users in its first 30 minutes, with mostly United States traffic and some European traffic.

Automated social-media performance reporting for content creators and brand deals

Open Residency — AI Agents: The Most Valuable Skill You Can Learn in 2026 (Full Course)

Use an AI agent to collect social-media performance data, analyze videos and their hooks, and produce a branded report that a content creator can give to a sponsoring brand or review internally.

Problem: Creators need a repeatable way to analyze many videos and communicate performance, creative angles, hooks, dates, engagement, and reasons for success without manually compiling the report.

For: Content creators and creators conducting brand deals who need to demonstrate how sponsored or other videos performed for a brand.

Examples

• A report analyzing the creator's 60 Instagram reels: it ranked reels by plays and included dates, titles, hooks, durations, engagement rates, and pattern tags.

AI-generated video content service for local professionals

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The 11 Best Side Hustles for 2026

Create presenter-style AI videos from a client's headshot and instructional scripts, then sell recurring social-media content packages.

Problem: Business owners need consistent educational social content but may lack the time, confidence, or production ability to make videos.

For: Mortgage brokers, real-estate professionals, and other business owners who want social-media content but do not want to record it themselves.

Examples

• Christie, a mortgage broker and real-estate agent, used HeyGen with a headshot to make videos about home-equity lines of credit.

Goodwill time-lapse home-service media business

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The 11 Best Side Hustles for 2026

Provide selected home services for free in exchange for permission to film the transformation, then monetize the resulting time-lapse content through online audiences and related revenue.

Problem: Homeowners receive needed work at no charge, while the operator creates visually compelling content and builds a large audience.

For: Homeowners who need services such as mowing, pressure washing, landscaping, fencing, house painting, or roofing; the media product also targets online viewers.

Examples

• SB Mowing and SB Pressure Washing reportedly had about 50 million subscribers across platforms at the time described, later estimated at 60 to 70 million.

A productized digital service agency sold through a subscription

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Most Profitable Solo Business You've Never Heard Of

Sell a clearly defined digital service off the shelf rather than using proposals, estimates, calls and multiple meetings. Customers visit the website, buy the service, pay, and receive the work quickly. The service can be design, marketing, copywriting or social-media work, with delivery focused on reducing time to value.

Problem: Traditional agencies are expensive, slow and administratively heavy, while full-time employees and contractors continue costing money when there is no work.

For: Businesses and startups that need recurring digital work but do not want to hire full-time employees or commit to a traditional agency.

Examples

• DesignJoy: a one-person productized design agency offering subscription-based design work, including branding, websites, social-media assets and presentation decks.

Sell targeted advertising space on local postcards

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast is live!

Sell postcard advertising to local businesses, then concentrate on the business categories that produce the greatest customer value and return on advertising spend.

Problem: Helps local businesses acquire customers through targeted postcard offers while allowing the postcard operator to price space according to the value generated.

For: Local businesses, especially businesses with high-ticket services and measurable close rates.

Examples

• A cookie business offered a free cookie through the postcard; every person who came in also bought something else.

Local newsletter combined with a local business directory

Frey Chu — His First Directory Made $350K/year and He Still Doubles Down on Them

Create a local media business that publishes useful neighborhood information and maintains a directory of local businesses. The newsletter supplies distribution and audience ownership, while the directory supplies a product that can be marketed through the same audience and monetized through listings or leads.

Problem: Local information is fragmented and difficult to discover, while businesses need a more durable way to reach relevant local customers than buying newsletter advertisements alone.

For: Residents seeking local events and businesses, and local businesses seeking visibility and qualified customers.

Examples

• Boise local newsletter: had 23,000 subscribers, all in Boise, but was spending substantial effort selling advertisements; adding a directory was presented as a way to create a product and reduce dependence on ads.

Faceless AI-produced explainer video channel

ManuAGI - AutoGPT Tutorials — How to Make Vox-Style Explainer Videos With AI (Faceless YouTube Goldmine)

Create Vox-style explainers, educational videos, documentaries, or finance videos through a single AI-assisted pipeline covering topic selection, research, scripting, voiceover, visual asset generation, scene planning, project organization, animation, and export.

Problem: Producing an explainer video traditionally requires separate work for writing, illustration, motion design, voice acting, scene planning, and project assembly.

For: Creators producing Vox-style explainers, educational content, documentaries, or finance videos who want to create videos without a team, manual voice recording, coding, or After Effects.

Examples

• Gold and central-bank buying: the workflow produced a completed explainer covering gold's record price, central-bank purchases, and frozen Russian reserves.

AI multilingual dubbing service for YouTube channels

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Laziest AI Side Hustle Anyone Can Start Right Now

Clone a YouTuber's voice and dub channel content into additional languages so the creator can reach audiences and sell advertising in other countries.

Problem: YouTubers may want to reach international audiences but lack the time and effort required to dub their content into multiple languages.

For: YouTube creators, potentially specialized by channel size, such as channels with 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers.

Examples

• The creator says dubbing channels into 14 languages helped generate advertising revenue in other countries.

Personalized sales-email and customer-list optimization service

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — 5 Ways to Make Money From an AI the Government Fears

Create highly personalized sales emails or campaigns for businesses by enriching each contact with detailed information and using AI to produce tailored messaging at scale.

Problem: Generic sales emails produce weaker responses, while manually researching and personalizing every contact takes too long.

For: Businesses with email lists that are not being fully used, including gyms, med spas and other small businesses, as well as companies seeking more effective cold outreach.

Examples

• Gym: Given as an example of a small business whose email list could be better utilized.

Digital reputation management agency

Young Entrepreneurs Forum — 23 BORING Businesses That Quietly Make Millionaires (99% of People Ignore Them)

Help businesses monitor feedback, improve online visibility, respond professionally to negative reviews, and strengthen their public image.

Problem: Businesses lack the expertise and ongoing attention needed to manage reviews, search results, and online perception.

For: Local businesses, medical clinics, law firms, consultants, and e-commerce brands with reputation issues.

Examples

• Local businesses: identified as customers that struggle with reputation management.

A productized branding agency for technology companies and digital products

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Most Profitable Solo Business You've Never Heard Of

Provide branding as a repeatable service that gives a company a distinctive visual identity and a consistent aesthetic across its product, website and supporting assets. AI can generate photography, illustrations, backgrounds and other assets, but the service still depends on human taste and creative direction.

Problem: AI makes it easy for competitors to build similar products, causing websites and products to look generic. Branding creates differentiation and cohesion across customer-facing assets.

For: Technology companies, startups and digital-product businesses that have a functional product but need distinctive branding to stand out from similar AI-built products.

Examples

• DesignJoy: provided branding, logos and overall brand aesthetics for software products and other digital businesses.

Local investigative journalism subscription

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — You Only Need a Laptop to Start This Business

A paid local publication focused on deep reporting, investigative stories, and meaningful details about one city or local area rather than copied press releases. AI and deep research could increase the number of stories one journalist can cover, while subscriptions and local advertising could support the business.

Problem: Many local markets have little serious reporting, while existing coverage may be understaffed, shallow, or largely copied from press releases.

For: Residents who want thoughtful reporting about their city, and local businesses that want to reach intelligent, engaged subscribers.

Examples

• A local publication could report that a nearby Chick-fil-A is getting a new drive-through lane.

Business-to-business appointment setting agency

Young Entrepreneurs Forum — 23 BORING Businesses That Quietly Make Millionaires (99% of People Ignore Them)

Book qualified meetings for companies by contacting prospective business clients through email, LinkedIn, cold calling, or direct outreach.

Problem: Companies struggle to find qualified leads and sales meetings and often dislike doing cold outreach themselves.

For: Marketing agencies, software companies, insurance firms, real estate services, and other companies that need more clients.

Examples

• Marketing agencies: named as a target industry.

E-commerce store management service

Young Entrepreneurs Forum — 23 BORING Businesses That Quietly Make Millionaires (99% of People Ignore Them)

Manage daily online-store operations for owners who are overwhelmed by product, customer, inventory, order, marketing, and website tasks.

Problem: Store owners need operational help so they can focus on sales and growth.

For: Owners of Shopify, Amazon, or WooCommerce stores.

Examples

• Shopify stores: identified as a client-store example.

AI-generated virtual influencer

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Laziest One-Person Business You Can Start

Build a fictional influencer that appears to be a real person, give it a defined identity and backstory, publish planned content and pivot after a month if the concept is not performing.

Problem: A creator can produce a consistent social-media presence without using a real person's identity or appearing on camera, while testing different fictional personalities and content directions.

For: An audience interested in the virtual influencer's chosen character, topic or niche; the builder is also targeting businesses or monetization opportunities that can emerge from the audience.

Examples

• AI influencer: the transcript proposes creating a fictional influencer that looks like a real human, with character visuals, a backstory and a one-month content calendar.

AI audiobook narration service using an author's cloned voice

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Laziest AI Side Hustle Anyone Can Start Right Now

Create audiobook versions of books in the author's voice with AI, reducing the time and cost required for studio recording or professional voice actors. Multilingual editions can be added.

Problem: Authors may need roughly 12 hours to record a book, but may not consider studio production worthwhile or may lack the budget for a professional voice actor.

For: Authors who lack the time or budget to record an audiobook or hire a professional studio or voice actor, especially authors whose books may sell relatively few copies.

Examples

• Audiobook narration for authors with limited budgets is presented as a service that could be sold for approximately $500 to a couple of thousand dollars.

Generative-engine optimization execution loop

Github Awesome — GitHub Trending Weekly #42: nimbus, xy, persona, drawesome, letsseal, camelAI, OpenSlides, numbat

Geo Look turns generative-engine optimization into an execution workflow by measuring brand visibility across AI engines, auditing citation gaps, producing implementation tickets and deployable assets, and reopening regressed work after later recrawls.

Problem: Converts AI-engine visibility monitoring into tracked implementation work instead of leaving it as a dashboard-only activity.

Examples

• Geo Look: samples AI-engine brand visibility, audits citation gaps, creates tickets and assets, and tracks regressions.

Niche TikTok trend report

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — Forget Big Apps. These Tiny Tools Are Making Millions

Scrape TikTok hashtags on a recurring schedule, identify trending sounds, hashtags, and creators within a niche, and email a weekly report to marketing customers.

Problem: Marketing teams need current niche-specific trend information without manually monitoring TikTok every week.

For: Marketing agencies and brands in niches such as beauty, fitness, or finance.

Examples

• A beauty, fitness, or finance trend report could be sold to marketing agencies for $50 or $100 per month.

Real estate listing marketing package service

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — The Laziest One-Person Business You Can Start

Create complete marketing packages for individual real estate listings and use a free sample package to win the realtor's future listing work.

Problem: Real estate agents need recurring help with listing graphics, copywriting, listing presentation and social-media posting, but may not have the time or capability to produce all of those assets themselves.

For: Real estate agents, particularly agents in the top 5% who need help marketing listings.

Examples

• Real estate ad machine: the transcript proposes packaging the marketing of individual listings for realtors, with the claimed possibility that a realtor will pay for future listings.

Curated daily magazine of the most valuable posts in a niche

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — You Only Need a Laptop to Start This Business

A daily account or publication that selects the most useful posts from a specific online community, highlights the few readers should see, and filters out viral content that is not worth their time. It could begin as a side hustle and potentially earn through creator payments or audience monetization.

Problem: Social platforms optimize for engagement and dwell time, making it difficult for users to find the small number of genuinely valuable posts.

For: People who want the best information from a niche such as SMB Twitter, financial Twitter, or another specialized online community without spending time browsing the whole platform.

Examples

• Sean Puri is cited as sending an email with the five tweets that excited him most.

Interactive scroll-driven brand-story production service

Github Awesome — GitHub Trending Monthly #9（2026.07）

A brand story is converted into a connected camera flight with generated isometric scenes, transition clips, and a portable scrolling playback engine.

Problem: Separate video clips can feel disconnected, and desktop footage may crop poorly on phones.

For: Brands that want an interactive promotional story rather than a conventional video.

Examples

• Scroll World creates a single scroll-controlled camera flight for a brand story and supports separate portrait rendering for phones.

AI-generated virtual staging service for real estate listings

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — He Built This Business in One Weekend for $40

Turn unstaged or poorly photographed real estate listing images into realistic staged versions and sell the images to listing agents on a per-photo basis.

Problem: Physical staging can cost approximately $4,000 and involves moving furniture, while agents need attractive listing images to market homes more effectively.

For: Real estate agents whose listings lack attractive staged photographs and who want to improve the presentation of those listings without physically staging the homes.

Examples

• The speaker claimed that staged homes sell for 7% more on average or remain on the market for 23 days rather than 42 days, presenting staging as the value proposition for the service.

Facebook Marketplace media company

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast — How AI Makes Facebook Marketplace a Gold Mine

Use scrapers to discover unusual or entertaining Marketplace listings and publish them as a niche media brand across social platforms, a website, or a blog.

Problem: Interesting Marketplace listings are difficult to discover through a centralized source because Facebook does not provide a broad public discovery feed for them.

For: An audience interested in unusual Marketplace listings and advertisers or other businesses seeking access to that niche audience.

Examples

• Zillow Gone Wild is described as a media company with tens of millions of followers across platforms, a website, and a blog that posts unusual Zillow listings.

AI-assisted editing service that removes machine-writing patterns while preserving authorial voice

Github Awesome — GitHub Trending Monthly #9（2026.07）

Text is checked for canned AI-writing habits, with the smallest useful revisions applied and a separate detection mode that reports patterns without claiming to identify the author.

Problem: Machine-written text may contain fake contrasts, vague attribution, dramatic fragments, and inflated claims that weaken an author's voice.

For: Writers and editors who want to reduce artificial-sounding patterns in drafts.

Examples

• No AI Slop flags fake contrasts, vague attribution, dramatic fragments, and inflated claims, then makes minimal revisions.

AI-assisted GitHub README redesign service

ManuAGI - AutoGPT Tutorials — Top Open-Source GitHub Projects : LobeHub, clawk, Jolt Physics, Clodex, mindwalk & Persome #276

An agent skill that reads a repository, identifies its clearest value and proof, and redesigns its README using SVG visual identity with searchable, copyable markdown explanations.

Problem: Making a repository homepage communicate its purpose and evidence before exposing jargon or directory structure.

For: Open-source maintainers and developers whose repositories are difficult for visitors to understand.