How I’m using AI to make passive income—and you can too.

Hey there,

I'm willing to bet you spend at least a few hours a week doing tedious, mind-numbing (but necessary) things that can be automated. 

Automation has been around for a while. Back in the day, I had an automation on my phone that was pretty simple, like “Turn my phone on silent when I get to work.” It was done with an app installed on my phone, and using GPS, it could track when I got to work and turn the phone on mute.

But now, they’ve gotten really good and really complex, too.

Everyone is using it.

Have you ever been browsing Instagram shorts - and they tell you to comment with a specific word - and instantly send you a message with whatever they promised, a PDF, a list of prompts, or a link?

They use automation - something like this below from Zapier.com.

What this system does is monitor the comments of a selected post for a specific comment - when it seems that comment, it sends the person who left the comment a pre-set direct message.

This not only gives them a lead to follow up with later - but it also increases engagement on their video, so Instagram pushes it out to more people!

It’s pretty genius.

Here’s an example of how I use automation using Zapier

This workflow is actually how you can sell any digital goods, whether it’s an ebook, templates, planners, or whatever.

So, Imagine someone buys something when it’s 4 a.m. for you. They don’t want to wait until you wake up, check, and then send an email, so using automation, you can make it so that if anyone buys something, they get it instantly.

Pretty nifty, right?

Here’s how it works: Stripe is the payment processor where the payment is made (trigger), so the next thing that happens is The Zapier filter then goes through the transaction, finds your email (search), and sends it to MailerLite (aggregator), which then sends you an email with details on where to download the book and the bonuses, all without me even having to be awake.

There are thousands of premade “zaps” that call for a variety of situations; they also have an AI mode that can create them for you - If you explain what you want to do - try it out. It’s pretty simple.

(You have to give zapier permission to log in to your accounts on all the sites you want to post it on - but it’s safe and encrypted)

Key Capabilities of Zapier: 

• Integration with thousands of apps.

• Lots of pre-made templates and an AI that helps you build your personal “zap.”

Make.com offers a visual approach to automation, allowing users to design workflows as flowcharts.

This visual structure makes it easy to build even complex automation without the headache of coding.

One example of how I use make.com is to manage my inbox.

Instead of spending hours every time I get an email, ChatGPT goes through it and (based on the persona I’ve created) decides how to reply, creates a response, and saves it in my drafts (don’t worry. It doesn’t send them for me!)

This cuts down 2 hours of daily inbox browsing to more than 15 minutes! The diagram below shows how it’s structured.

It’s really helpful, and I can’t imagine a time before it now!

I also use it to post my blog on various social media sites automatically.

So, the screenshot above shows a make.com automation I use for my blog.

Every time I publish a new blog post, I want it to go everywhere—Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can share it on your blog directly with WordPress, but it only posts the link to the blog. What I want to do is create tailored content for each platform and post it on social media, but it would take me ages to format the content, go to the sites, and manually post it.

So, what make.com does—and you can see it from left to right—starts when I post something on my blog. The software then sends that post to ChatGPT, which creates tailored versions for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, goes into them, and posts them.

It’s simple and quick, and it takes a little time to set up, but once it is, I don’t have to worry about this again!

One of the reasons make.com is really popular is that you can create large, complex workflows and then just share them with other people who can import them and start using them immediately! (People sell these for hundreds of dollars sometimes)

Key capabilities:

• Some people prefer the “left to right” visual workflow, and it is a lot easier to edit and manage that way when you get a lot of steps in automation.

• The ability to share templates is a real game changer. Creating really long workflows can get complicated and involve a lot of troubleshooting, so just getting a working pre-made template is really helpful.

How automation tools work

This is an excerpt from my latest book, ChatGPT Secrets. If you found this interesting, you should check it out. 

Check it out

Bonus 1: Access to my custom prompt generator!

Bouns 2: List of 20 amazing AI tools you need to start and run a business from scratch.

Bonus 3: The book ChatGPT Secrets audiobook!

I wish you the best,

Neil

PS. As always, feel free to reply to this email with your thoughts. I read them all.