Can you really make money easily with AI? As AI goes mainstream and anyone can use it to create their own work, this has become the single most important question of our time.
Yes, you can absolutely use AI to generate YouTube videos, scripts, images, editing, subtitles, and voiceovers. You can build websites and software without any special technical skills. All of that is real.
But let's be honest. Most people are not simply curious about how to make things with AI. What they really want to know is whether they can actually make money from what they build. So can you?
I have spent a massive amount of time thinking about this, and my conclusion is that the answer is far more complex than most people expect. Yes, you can make money. But only a tiny minority will. And to understand exactly who that minority is, we need to dig into the underlying business model.
Understanding the Moat
To understand this, you first need to understand the concept of a moat. Up until the Middle Ages, a moat was a deep, water-filled ditch dug around a castle to block enemies from approaching. In business, it means an exclusive competitive advantage that protects your profits from being stolen by competitors.
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| Real competitive advantage is something technology alone can never copy |
Every successful business has a moat. For anyone running one, the biggest ongoing question is how to build and protect their own.
The shape of a moat changes depending on the type of business. For platform businesses, the number of users is the moat itself.
Look at YouTube. The platform does not generate the core value. YouTube makes money not because it creates something on its own, but because users create value inside it. Sure, YouTube has some original content, but it is the creators uploading their videos that make the platform worth anything. Those creators are the moat. And because of that moat, no other video platform can seriously challenge YouTube.
Even if a new company launched something with a prettier design, faster servers, and better playback features, nobody would switch. Why? Because the value lives with the users, not in the technology. To beat YouTube, copying the tech is nowhere near enough. You would need something overwhelmingly better.
Users, Capital, and Trust
This same logic applies directly to finance. The moat of a financial app is not how great its technology is, but how many people around you already use it.
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| Early platform growth is not about technology, It is about investing in your users first |
When Elon Musk founded the internet bank X.com back in 1999, he spent nearly all of his investment capital giving money away to customers. Sign up, get $20. Refer a friend, get another $10. Adjusted for today, that is roughly $30 just for creating an account. He poured his entire investment into growing the user base, because in a platform business, the number of users is the ultimate moat.
For other businesses, capital and data become the moat. In AI, algorithms matter, but how much data and computing power you control is equally critical. This is exactly why so many people predict that Google will ultimately lead frontier AI. You simply cannot crack their moat just by building a better algorithm.
In some cases, trust is the moat. If you had to choose between Warren Buffett and a complete stranger who miraculously generates the exact same returns, every single person would put their money with Buffett. Why? Decades of built-up trust. To compete with Buffett, being slightly better at investing is not enough. You would need a stronger foundation of trust than he has.
Good businesses are hard to copy, and even when you do copy them, you cannot steal their market just by mimicking them. You need something vastly superior to what already exists.
The Illusion of the AI Money Machine
So let's go back to the original question. What kind of moat exists in a business built entirely on AI generation? Absolutely none.
The world we live in is ruthlessly efficient. If there is a way to make big money doing something literally anyone can do, crowds will flock to it instantly. And as time passes, the value of that work gets driven down to minimum wage.
Sure, you might make some money using AI generation right at the start. But that window will always be incredibly short.
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| Chasing AI trends without a moat is just a race to the bottom |
When Midjourney first launched, a channel called The AI Historian pulled in 10 million views with a single YouTube Short and hit 330,000 subscribers with just 20 videos.
But exactly as I said earlier, they had zero moat. Instantly, an army of people started making the exact same content. Countless copycats flooded the space, and within three or four months the channel lost its unique value and views plummeted by about 20 times. The operator eventually stopped making videos altogether and started selling courses instead.
And this exact same pattern repeats every single time a new AI tool is released. A new technology drops. A small group uses it to create something novel. Days later, the majority makes the exact same thing and crashes the value. Rinse and repeat.
This teaches us one undeniable truth. The moment someone teaches you how to do this, or the moment a course comes out, you are already too late.
The Only Proven Answer
If you are absolutely set on building a business purely through AI generation, the only way to survive is not by taking courses, but by instantly spotting new trends emerging overseas and bringing them to your local market faster than anyone else. And then doing it over and over again.
But I do not consider this a good strategy. Why? Because you are not accumulating a single drop of lasting asset value.
To achieve truly massive success, you have to create value that compounds into the future. This is why the most successful people usually stick to one single field with gritty persistence for five to ten years. It looks slow at first. But I genuinely believe it is the only path to ultimate, lasting success. Whether it is YouTube, a startup, or any other business.
I have been listening to business podcasts for nearly ten years, and every single world-class entrepreneur says the exact same thing. Think long-term. Look five to ten years into the future.
I completely understand why fast money is so seductive. Human beings have been evolving for 300,000 years with an almost exclusive focus on immediate survival. We are literally wired to prioritize whatever is sitting right in front of us.
But if you want to build real wealth, you have to recognize that instinct and override it. You have to run your business with a five to ten year perspective.
I know that consistently building your own unique, valuable assets in a violently shifting AI market is never easy. But despite all of that, I am convinced this is the most definitive answer for surviving the AI era.
Stop chasing the fast money. Start digging your own moat.
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