---
title: 'The New Way to Make Money with AI in 2026 for Beginners'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=xQEVBrZse0E'
video_id: 'xQEVBrZse0E'
date: 2026-07-28
channel: 'Adam Enfroy'
---

# The New Way to Make Money with AI in 2026 for Beginners

> Source: [The New Way to Make Money with AI in 2026 for Beginners](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xQEVBrZse0E)

## Summary

This video presents a structured 'creator income ladder' for building an online business from scratch, emphasizing a sequential approach to monetization. It outlines three levels: affiliate marketing, digital products/courses, and high-ticket offers, each building skills for the next. The focus is on sustainable income through owned assets like email lists, rather than relying on ad revenue or platform algorithms.

### Key Points

- **Creator Income Ladder Overview** [00:01] — A progression from recommending others' products (affiliate) to creating your own digital products, then to high-ticket offers. Each level builds skills for the next.
- **Foundation: Niche and Monetization** [01:06] — Choose a niche with monetization potential (e.g., health, wealth, hobbies) where people spend money on tools, services, or outcomes. Avoid niches with no products.
- **Platform Agnostic and Email List** [02:29] — Don't rely on a single platform; build an email list as an owned asset. Platforms change, but email is permanent.
- **Level 1: Affiliate Marketing** [03:37] — Fastest path to income. Recommend products your audience needs. Use tutorials and informational content with affiliate links. Focus on recurring commissions and $50+ per sale.
- **Level 2: Courses and Digital Products** [04:34] — Create your own IP after understanding audience needs. Price $500-$2000. Requires trust and an email list of 1,000-5,000+. Build sales funnels with opt-in pages, email sequences, and sales pages.
- **Level 3: High Ticket Offers** [05:52] — Coaching, masterminds, done-for-you services ($3,000-$10,000+). Sell transformation and accountability. Requires sales calls and closing skills.
- **Affiliate Income Examples** [07:22] — Shows real affiliate earnings: $1.2M from Thinkific, $126K from Bluehost in 12 months. Demonstrates the potential of affiliate marketing.
- **Affiliate Strategy: Tutorials and Niches** [10:24] — Create tutorials for popular products in your niche. Choose 3-5 affiliate programs. Focus on less competitive niches like hobbies for beginners.
- **Building an Email List** [13:07] — Offer a lead magnet (e.g., PDF) to collect emails. Send helpful automated sequences without selling. Example: built list to 40,000 with a free checklist.
- **Creating a Digital Product** [14:39] — Survey audience for pain points. Course should be step-by-step implementation with community and live Q&As. Use opt-in page, VSL, email funnel, and sales page.
- **High Ticket Sales Funnel** [17:16] — Use a form to book calls (e.g., Calendly). Qualify leads and close over the phone. B2B is easier for high ticket. Requires sales skills.
- **Summary: Ladder Builds Skills** [19:55] — Affiliate teaches marketing and content strategy. Courses teach product creation and funnels. High ticket teaches sales and transformation delivery. Each level builds on the previous.

### Conclusion

The creator income ladder provides a clear, sequential path to building a sustainable online business. By starting with affiliate marketing, then moving to digital products, and finally high-ticket offers, creators can generate income at every stage without needing a large following.

## Transcript

turn it into real income, there is a progression that makes it way easier. I call it the creator income ladder. It's a [music] structure for how your content you start by recommending [music] other people's products when you don't have
one yet. Then you introduce your own digital products at the correct time, and then you move to higher ticket products when the timing is right. It's It's how you can make a solid income from a very small following. And the
reason this works isn't totally random because each level of this ladder >> forces you to build the skills that the next level requires. So, in this video, I'm going to break down exactly what to do in the correct order if you're
starting from scratch and want to create a real online business in 2026. Now, before we get started, if you want the exact AI strategies and prompts, get my in the description and the pinned comment below. It's a full AI launch
specifically for you. It helps you take [music] your niche, your content strategy get started that can actually make money. So, now let's get into it. online, you need the right foundation because most creators, they either they
views problem. They have a positioning problem. Maybe they're trying teaching the wrong things to the wrong audience on the wrong platform. No income is things work, and eventually you can monetize it later. The first step here
is choosing the right niche, which is tied to monetization. So, this is teaching something specific. You have to teach in a niche where there's tools, services, or outcomes that have actual monetary value. So, the first question
affiliate programs in the niche you want to join? Are there products? Are people spending money on things, right? Camping has tents, backpacks, cots, all kinds of products. Journaling does not. It has a journal and a pen, right? So, does your
niche actually have monetization potential? Think of it like Amazon. Are there actually products involved in that category? If there are no products or no long-term, think about what can you teach? What could you sell a digital
for somebody? Maybe it's a problem that you've gone through yourself, some a main ones that make the most money for digital products are health, wealth, and hobbies, teaching people to play the guitar, teaching people how to knit. You
have to be able to eventually think of an outcome in this niche. You don't have like month 12, but think of an outcome that you could provide that a digital is really important. Another big point is you have to be platform agnostic.
YouTube is great. Blogs can drive traffic. Newsletters can be good. X or things. TikTok's cool, too. But platforms change, algorithms change, ad revenue changes. You should never put all your eggs in one basket, ultimately
never changes is your email list. So, if you're building an audience on any capturing emails, you're kind of building this on potentially rented land algorithm, and then you lose access to your entire audience. So, building an
email list is an owned asset that you should be thinking about as well. That Because what most creators do is they just create a bunch of content and then hope that sponsorships and ad revenue come. But the truth is, sponsorships and
ad revenue should only be like 5% of your income. If you're teaching and in affiliate revenue and your own digital product sales at 95% of your income. foundations are teaching in a niche that you feel comfortable in over the course
of time, being platform agnostic, and focusing on revenue from the beginning. So, affiliate marketing, courses, coaching, they're not random income streams that you pick completely at random. They're sequential. They build
on each other. The order matters more than anything else. So, let me walk you through this income ladder. Level one is affiliate marketing. So, this is the entry point, and it's probably the most underrated level on
the ladder. Affiliate marketing is the fastest path to making money online. You don't need a team. You don't need an audience yet, a huge one. You just need to the products that they're already looking for. So, you think about it.
Basically, it makes you more money than ad revenue does. You get more control you add your affiliate links, and per viewer or per source of traffic, you revenue. It dictates some of your content strategy because in any niche,
can't golf without golf clubs. You can't fish without fishing pole. So, whatever come first when you don't yet have an audience to sell a product to, but you hoping and praying for ad revenue. Affiliate income is good, but it's also
cut, programs could shut down, traffic could dry up, and different things. So, this is level one building towards level two. Level two is courses and digital products. This is owned IP. So, once you understand this audience over the course
of time, what they bought and why, you start creating your own products. So, a course priced at 500 to 2,000 dollars that costs you almost nothing to deliver after initially building it other than your time is a digital product that can
do well, or an ebook template that runs through a funnel. So, level two requires that your audience trusts you. So, you're building your email list to a level of say 1,000 to 5,000 or more people, and then you're building a
digital product on top of that. So, this skill set actually adds You start earning learning a little bit more about this. So, you start learning systems. content adding affiliate links. And at this point, you're creating a sales
pages. So, you have an opt-in page with a headline, get my lead magnet, right? Get the top five workouts for your lower back, whatever it is, right? That gets them into an email sequence. Email sequence gets them to a sales page.
Sales page gets to check out. They buy. They get to the paid offer in the little bit about the back end here. This is how we've made a ton of money on YouTube is building back end sales systems. So, this These are things that
three. Now, level three is high ticket. of online business become much higher. So, now we're talking about coaching, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 dollar or higher offers. That's one-on-one coaching,
group masterminds, done-for-you services, kind of the agency route, too, kind of ties into this. So, the common thread here is customer transformation, this level, you're not just selling information, you're selling the
done-for-you outcome. You're selling the shortcut, the accountability, the direct And then you can't necessarily do this right out of the gate. A lot of people do this on Instagram. They just run meta ads to their high ticket offers, auto,
getting them onto sales calls, and doing it. And that's totally fine. But if you want to build a true organic engine like we did, it's going to take some time. So, you start learning the process of content, affiliate marketing,
end sales funnels, and then you get into high ticket, which includes sales over the phone, right? Talking, getting on Zoom calls, having a sales script, a little bit more on the um fulfillment side of things. How do you manage
clients, right? So, these are the top skills that you're building over time. Affiliate, you know, you can make it to a certain income threshold, then you list, selling your own products, and then you can gain even more revenue by
selling high ticket. So, as you can see here, this is a couple of affiliate networks that I'm in. So, PartnerStack is one. I've made few, you know, different software tools that I promote just through affiliate links only.
99,000 clicks, 7,500 sign-ups, 1.2 million for Thinkific. 119,000 for to Impact, for example, this is mainly where I promote Bluehost. So, this is
just the last 12 months only from March 11th, 2025 to March 11th, 2026, time of before it's going live. Bluehost, 460 sales of 126,000 dollars
in affiliate commissions. So, affiliate starts the strategy. You add links into your content. You talk about different things that are helpful. Bluehost. You need a web host, right? That's you're teaching the information,
and they need products to do it. You can also see this is one of my like four ThriveCart logins for courses, gross revenue 2.8 on this one, 2.5 million net revenue, commissions paid. We had some affiliates for our courses.
products. You can see that this has made over the course of time. So, what does that actually look like? Well, again, if you join and watch the AI masterclass or click the link in the video below, you can also decide to enroll in AI Income
Blueprint 2.0. Uh it's on sale right now. Um but you what you'll get is what does a digital product look like? It's actually really simple. This is a school community that has lots and lots This is probably at this point over 200
hours of content, AI Income Blueprint flagship blogging course, right? So, it building a website with AI. So, you have Basically, it's very simple. You have videos on the left side, and then inside of here, you can watch the videos. I can
also add slides, documents, all of this. For example, a newer one launched, the 10K AI agency course. Welcome gets you to the program guide, where it's not whatever you want it to be. Doesn't It shouldn't just be videos that are
There should be live Q&As. There should be activity going on. So, you can see like templates. All right, well, there's a con, you know, agency standard operating procedures. So, how to actually create an AI agency, how to
brand and identify, do your own branding and positioning, the offer and services, pricing to your website, how to build the website for your agency, all of that digital product, there's going to be a classroom with all of this. We have a
full YouTube growth engine course, how we made all the money through YouTube, Pinterest, email marketing, PPC, affiliate marketing, Upwork, different stuff in here, the original blog blog growth engine, which is like
50 hours of content there. Live Q&As. So, when I do them each week, They're small group Q&As. There's a calendar in the community. You can see a list of a map of members around the world. That's basically what
a digital product is. What what talking about is a community that you can join we've covered some of the basics. Let's get into uh each level a little bit more marketing, again. So, affiliate marketing is not neces-
destination. A lot of people just want to be ghost affiliates and never create do that. Just know that your revenue ceiling will be limited compared to going all in on building this more well-rounded personal brand business.
content you create is teaching something about marketing. For example, like you want to join programs in your niche. Not a hundred, right? I joined 287 or so over the course of time. You don't need that now. Maybe three to five. So, for
example, if you're talking about AI tools, you could talk about like Jasper, ChatGPT, Jasper products. If you're in email marketing, you could talk about HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign. Right? If
builders, how to build a website, that could be Wix or Kajabi. It's uh you just think of what are the top most popular products in your niche that you could would be create tutorials based on this. Create one that says Wix tutorial, how
to build a website. Boom, affiliate links. So, tutorials are great for thing, screen share, simple video like this, put your head in the corner, or faceless. Do a full tutorial, very simple, click edit, timeline, boom,
People are making a ton of money that way. If you're creating blog content, I opportunity stay in a hobby, stay in something that's not as competitive. hobbies. All right, don't go into finance or credit cards or software if
you're starting a blog. That's just too competitive now. So, ultimately, the recurring commission. So, with affiliate marketing, it's like, can I make a recurring commission every month that someone stays a customer? 30% recurring,
higher ticket where you're at least making $50 to $100 commission for every video on the best online course platforms of 2026. It mainly promotes my Thinkific affiliate link. And this is a slow and steady video. It's getting like
100 to 200 views a day for the last 9 months, and it's just still rocking away with 100 to 200 views a day. That's because it's when you search YouTube for it, you'll find it near the top. And if you search it on Google, best online
here in the AI overview as the top video. So, that leads to affiliate links, which is this one, which is leading to people purchasing this, and well. So again, at the beginning, you're just choosing three to five affiliate
programs that will start your content strategy. Don't spread it too thin the very beginning about adding affiliate links right away. Creating a good content, helping the audience is foundational step number one, whether
it's on Instagram, YouTube, or a blog. Create content, get good at it, just keep practicing, keep doing it, keep being helpful, keep providing value, and in when you're ready. Now, as you have your affiliate content strategy, you're
content. If it's YouTube, it's in the description. If it's blogging, it's a standard format of brands 1 2 3 4 5, with your affiliate links. Now, as you're doing this, you're also, again,
you're doing this, you're also, again, creating info content. How to do things. How to build a website, how to start a blog, how to use AI to make money, how blog, how to use AI to make money, how to invest, right? How to do crypto, how
to do anything. How to play a guitar. So, those things are informational to have affiliate links. That's where you build your email list. So, you start collecting emails. And you don't have to do anything with these emails yet. You
lead magnet, something that's as helpful as humanly possible. Could be a PDF, you something like a single landing page, could be WordPress. Get them to opt in, and it will automatically Basically, if you're using Kit, which used to be
called ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign, or Mailchimp, or some email provider, you go to the form section on that. You put the form on the page, and that will then get everyone who puts their first name, email, and hits enter, they'll get put
have an automated email sequence. You would have to be getting Sunday's three to five email sequence that just is helpful as possible and doesn't sell anything. I did that back in 2019 to 2021. Two years, I built my email list
to 40,000 people. Never sold a thing. Just sent a free 15-page PDF that I had someone on Fiverr design, and I added in the text for a blog launch checklist. That built my email list to 40,000. I then launched my own digital product,
that then turned into the YouTube channel, started all these different starts with affiliate and just getting good at content creation. If you can affiliate links in. Then over the course of time, we move to step two. So,
that your audience will buy a thing. Courses capture higher margins. So, you creating this valuable content, earning some affiliate commissions. Maybe you're Now, you know exactly what problems your audience are, you can start surveying
say, "Hey, what is the main thing in this that you're struggling with? What are the gaps that exist? How do you have a product market fit?" That becomes your course idea. Now, there's a lot of ways to validate a course idea. 3 4 years
ago, we did a full beta test round with all these students live and spent 9 months preparing and all that. In the world of AI, that's way too long. That's like a lifetime. So, ultimately, you'll know, you'll get an idea of what your
audience wants. And it's actually pretty simple. Based on your niche, you teach them. If it's playing the guitar, then they just get better at the guitar. If it's fishing, they get better at fishing. If it's blogging, they learn
how to blog step by step. So, the course, the digital product is not You Your digital product becomes the implementation. It becomes the accountability, the live Q&A's, and the
implementation of the strategy. So, in a blogging video on YouTube, for about blogging, give some advice on keyword research and all of that. In a blogging course, that would be a step-by-step thing where it's 10 hours,
20 hours, 30 hours of actually doing it in a structured curriculum, like you're a professor, going through creating videos in the format with files, with resources. And then having the community, doing
Q&A's every week. That's what product actually is. The things you need for the funnel are a opt-in page with a lead magnet. The lead magnet should probably be a VSL, which is a video sales letter, that is
kind of showcasing your expertise. He's going over a really good idea, and then having people join and become customers potentially if they want to. Again, It's like you can watch my content on YouTube if you want to work with me and
talk to me every week if you want to and get support, this is what you can do and it, but you ultimately need a lead magnet and opt-in page, an email funnel. So, you write a five email sequence. Email one sends the lead
magnet. Email two, more, maybe a testimonial. This is John, this is what he did with this system. Every product basically is a transformation of a and then a unique mechanism. Why among
What is your secret? The email list thing goes to a sales page, which covers exactly what they get, a little sales video, and then into a checkout. Sounds So, these skills, again, you're building these skills over time. Marketing skills
are stacking as you're doing this over 6 to 12 months. And then we get to high mean charging more for the same thing. It's about solving deeper problems to a So, for example, at level one, you're just recommending products, affiliate.
frameworks. At level three, you're delivering on the outcome. So, this is real measurable transformation in someone's life with one-on-one coaching or done-for-you services. It's a lot easier if you do this. Think of who has
a high-ticket coaching program. Well, somebody who has money that wants to do fitness, for example, would be one, or ways to make money. Businesses, ultimately. You could go B2B here. You could say, "I'm going to teach YouTube
how to build this back-end sales funnel for your actual business." So, you want to go high ticket, B2B is actually an easier way to go with this. So, people, you want to think, who won't bat an eye at spending $6,000 with me? More
sale. So, think about that, too. All of these things in the income ladder are just things to keep in mind. Things to keep in mind to not distract from the very beginning. Now, to do this, the sales funnel is different. You
don't need an opt-in page with a lead magnet and a full email funnel and all form that people fill out that leads to a call. So, that could be a Calendly link to book a call with you. You're really
filtering people and uh validating them, making sure they're a good fit. They this much money? Do you want to get into this community, Add that in, and then you're getting on a call, you're closing it over the
going to put a credit card into a website. They're going to want to talk to somebody and get persuaded into it. So again, now, we need a salesperson. So, this is another This is kind of the final level of skills to build. If you
with this, too, that's is like kind of the final hardest skill to build. And again, the ladder can stop at any point. You can just create content, become an affiliate. If you choose the next route of your own
ticket, you can. This is a ladder that skills will continue to grow. And you whenever you're comfortable moving to the next stage, you can. Whereas I showed you School for a lower ticket
offer, something that you get tons and tons of value, content, live Q&A's, and the high-ticket one's more like a dedicated Slack, or a dedicated actually talking to you every week. There's documents that are just
specifically tailored to you. Or if it's a done-for-you service, that could be company does your YouTube videos, they do your content, whatever it is. So, it's completely different and and specific, and you create a dashboard
these different things with high ticket. So, again, those are more skills to build over time. So, to bring it all together, affiliate marketing teaches shows you what your audience is already buying. It dictates your content
strategy. It trains you in marketing, and it generates more income than ads would. Courses then let you own the margin. You take what you've learned solution, your own product. Then you have better economics, more control, and
an actual community. And then high ticket sells the transformation. You in levels one and two, and you deliver the highest value outcome you possibly can. So, each level builds the skills for the next one. Skip the steps, and
climb it strategically, you'll build a business that can pay you at every Daily from affiliate, from course launches, monthly from high ticket going viral. It's not about hitting some follower count or view count. It's about
becoming valuable, being a trusted resource, teaching something, creating simple content, and doing this in the right order. And you can start this from pick the right niche, you create the right content, you follow the ladder,
and you go up, you can do this. So, if you want help getting started, the first in the description pin comment below. Watch the free AI masterclass. It covers how to exactly choose the niche for you, develops has some prompts for your niche
and your full AI content strategy for your first 90 days. Just a full plan. that. And let me know what you thought. Hope you found this video useful. Please Subscribe to the channel if you haven't. And I will see you in the next video.