xJamesQ

AI can be used in a multitude of ways. So yeah, you can use it to compete with AI but it really comes down to what you are creating and wanting to produce with it. AI is still in a position where people can create better things and it still gets a lot wrong but it is quickly catching up, and that is what worries me.

Fair enough. You can do cheap stuff though. Like knock-off brands and what not. But if you have absolutely nothing to spare, then this isn't a good option you are correct.

It depends. I mean I know they have a $20 plan or at least did last I looked into it. They also have a free variation but to access all the special features, I would imagine that is locked behind their $200 a month plan.

I must not fully understand it then. It doesn't help that the media always gives mixed signals because of the politics of it all. I would like to see a second boom for people with internet businesses/websites like we had in the mid 2000s.

Likely just indirect consequences of changing things in the back end of the search engine. It sucks because most people still rely on them for traffic. Some do grow to a point where they have a loyal audience but most people don't.

Yeah but only partially. Alphabet, the parent company of Google. only just became a larger company than Microsoft in the last year or two. Bing in general has just been underused for awhile, much like Internet Explorer.

Claude allows you to customize your experience when you pay for it. You can name your own AI agent and have it be tailored to you and it tracks everything for you so you don't need to remember to keep asking. It is quite neat!

It is a balancing act. They always say to never sell yourself short but you can't over-hype yourself either or your product or service will end up being a let down.

The issue with Bing is that they don't pay as well. You can still get decent money running through their platform though. Google just dominates still, unfortunately.

I was going to say the same thing. It makes it easier to just have it pull from news sources around the world and compile everything for you then trying to dig through the thousands of news websites and hundreds of thousands of articles.

AI and general Tech are both up there. I think if you are going to do a channel for anything, that should be one to consider. A lot of people do great just reviewing tech products and you can be as niche as you want. You can focus on just phones, or drones, or computer parts, heck you could even just do a channel about reviewing and testing wires!

I had someone in my family ask about this. Asking if there is anything she could do online to supplement her husband's income. She is not someone that has a lot of experience in online spaces. She wouldn't know how to set up a website or start a YouTube channel. Nothing like that. So I am trying to see if there is actually still an option or two out there. I can't think of anything for newbies with little to no experience.

I have seen less and less of this work and this was before COVID or AI. I started seeing it go away back in 2015. I think the market was already shifting and we were seeing changes happening. AI started long before it became a mainstream topic. People have been using AI widely since around 2012. It started becoming more common in 2016 and blew up in 2020.

^ this is why you never want to lock yourself in without a safety net. A lot of people don't think to do this and it ends up costing them time and money.

Yeah, the economic forecasts are all saying similar although somethings are trending to level off or at least just stop rising. I would like to see prices go back down to what they were in 2018/2019 but I know there is no going back there.

I don't think people realize how much of a hassle it can be when you rely on another business for uptime. I try to get people away from this any chance I get because it is not only a waste of money but the services are almost all terrible now.

Yup! This is something that helps a lot of people stay motivated and on schedule with their work. It can be hard sometimes when you don't have someone or a team of people pushing you, you just have yourself.

I was going to say the same thing. I mean Google Analytics works off Google. Most people use Google's search engine. It makes sense to want to ensure you are getting the bet stats from them. You can run a secondary plugin or program to compare things as well. You don't need to use just one.

There are places you can go for free (think coffee shops) or paid locations that allow people to work in the same area from their own devices. Some will offer computers to work from similar to what Libraries do or have done in the past.

I can tell you there is no clear answer for this. Different models focus on different things. Claude Opus 4.7 for example is best for coding and agentic workflows while Gemini 3.1 Pro is best for research and reasoning. I think overall everyone will say the most well-rounded choice is ChatGPT. I think Grok also has its uses too.

I have heard of people doing similar to this but their cutoff point for no refunds was 50% completion. I think this model is a bit more fair in that you guarantee yourself 25% of the cost so if a client flakes out, you don't lose anything but on their end you have to reach 70% to say no refunds.

Figure out what you want to earn an hour. This will be your baseline. You then add anything that costs you money into the equation. So if you use paid programs, more expensive internet, etc. you add this to the hourly fee. So you make sure everything is accounted for plus you get what you desire per hour. If you ever think you are charging too much or too little, check your home location on Google and search for what your service costs in your specific area.

You can do a slow-roll increase. That is what a lot of companies do. So instead of increasing the cost right now, you announce price increases later. Another option would be to boost your value with words via your platform. Show why your service is costing more.

Oh they absolutely do. Mr. Beast would not be where he is today without Google pushing his videos to the top. They wanted a "poster boy" for content that was considered wholesome and since he was donating money and doing charity early on, it was the right move for them. Now, he just seems like some insane game show host. lol

You want to avoid any residential ISPs that don't include uptime guarantees, instead you look into using VPS providers with high uptime SLAs of 99.9%+ and configure automatic container restarts to handle unexpected crashes. This will act as a safety net for whatever you host.