Last month I set a goal to build an (almost) entirely automated AI business in 2026.

Here’s how the project is going so far.

In January, I spent about 13 hours experimenting with prompts, editing and refining outputs, and developing standard operating procedures and guidelines for my AI module to follow.

The project generated $222 during the month, or roughly $17.07 per hour of my direct input.

Since I’m only using free AI tools, the earnings were technically pure profit.

More importantly, though, I walked away with several insights worth sharing.

Most CEOs don’t write their own autobiographies, and many celebrities outsource their social media accounts to agencies. As much as people complain that AI is “lazy,” it’s really just a cheaper and more streamlined version of a business model that’s been around forever.

Even creative fields like art, music, and film rely on a small group of decision-makers outsourcing their vision to dozens, or hundreds, of employees and contractors.

Outsourcing everything to AI is stupid (more on that later), but hating the technology outright is mostly luddite cope — especially if you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur working with limited capital.

Most social media content was already being outsourced years ago. YouTubers and podcasters routinely hired people in India and the Philippines to act as “clippers,” chopping long-form content into bite-sized clips for TikTok or Instagram.

Posting on social media is already a low-ROI activity. YouTube Shorts pays roughly $40 per one million views. Twitter pays about $8 per one million impressions. If you live in the United States, you could work at McDonald’s for one hour and out earn most viral tweets.

AI-generated content and social media “slop” will likely become the norm across platforms that rely on low-paying ad revenue. As the technology improves, this content will stop looking like slop and widely be accepted as the norm.

As Charlie Munger once said, “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”

The effort required to produce content will eventually match what platforms are willing to pay.

During my month-long experiment, I noticed that most problems occurred when I failed to create strict guidelines and explain exactly what I wanted.

There were multiple occasions where I ran the same task through an AI platform, only to get wildly inconsistent results. In one case, Grok repeatedly crashed until I reworded the prompt. In another, it went off on a bizarre tangent and invented descriptions completely unrelated to the task.

If you want to save time, and avoid getting trapped in a frustrating loop of low-quality output, you need SOPs. Spell out every step, constraint, and expectation.

This is the same process companies like McDonald’s use to ensure consistency across thousands of locations, and it’s a trick you can apply directly to AI workflows.

The Daily Dividend is 100% written by me.

That said, I do run articles and dispatches through ChatGPT with the prompt: “Edit for grammar and clarity.”

In a recent dispatch, I included this line:

There were two reasons for this.

First, I have an immature sense of humor and thought it was funny.

Second, the detail subtly signals that I’m actually reading earnings reports and press releases, not just mindlessly copying numbers from a stock screener.

ChatGPT removed the joke, citing that it was “unprofessional” for a financial publication.

The program was 100% right. But removing it also stripped out an element of personality and made the section much blander.

So I added it back in.

AI follows the same principle as all computing: garbage in, garbage out. If you don’t understand what works (and what doesn’t) in your field, you won’t be able to use these tools effectively.

Suppose you operate in affiliate marketing, particularly in a low-originality niche like dating or generic motivational content.

With AI, you could easily generate special reports or exclusive guides for your audience every single day, even if each piece converts poorly.

For example, imagine you run a dating newsletter. You ask ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude to generate a list of five fragrances at different price points. You package it as a report titled “The Five Best First-Date Fragrances to Drive Her Wild,” and include affiliate links to Amazon or Jomashop.

Earning 4% commission on a $20 fragrance is not worth the time or effort if you have to spend an hour or more making this list yourself. It is 100% worth the effort if AI can make the list in 30 seconds, giving you a valuable asset that can be recycled again and again, even if the profit per send isn’t particularly high.

If you operate in a scalable field, AI will replace you — either because you embraced it and freed up your time, or because someone else did.

If you operate in an obscure, technical, or deep research field, you still have an edge.

At least for now.

Value investing is great. When it comes to deploying my money into other people’s businesses, I want to buy an established stalwart with proven profitability.

But if everyone only invested in proven industries, innovation wouldn’t exist. There would be no airplanes, smartphones, or e-commerce because these ideas would be viewed as “too risky.”

If you’re a dividend investor or you focus on buying proven, quality stocks with positive cash flows, it’s easy to dismiss emergent new technologies.

There are dozens of “disruptors” every year, and most of them are embarrassing failures.

Anyone remember NFT monkeys or those metaverse houses selling for six figures?

Investing in speculative technologies is often risky, especially for retail investors.

However, using “sweat equity” and gaining hands-on expirience with new inventions often costs nothing and gives you a first-mover advantage. Anecdotally, I was one of the first people to make short-form content on YouTube when it rolled out Shorts. I was early, competition was minimal, and that alone was enough to win several awards and trophies.

Consumer AI is still early, which means there’s time to learn the technology and integrate it into your business before the first-mover advantage disappears.

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P.S. Today’s report is sponsored by an AI newsletter (I’m actually a subscriber) but this article was written before the sponsorship and is unrelated to it.

Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice, always do your own research.