💰 AI MONEY MOVES
Skip the hype. Make the money.
Issue #1 — Welcome. Let's get right into it.
💰 Money Move of the Week
Forget Apps. Build a Tiny, Boring Tool and Charge $20/Month for It.
Here's what nobody tells you about making money with AI: the people actually cashing checks aren't building the next ChatGPT. They're building stupid-simple tools that do one annoying thing for one specific type of person.
I'm talking stuff like — a tool that reformats messy CSVs for accountants. A menu description writer for restaurant owners. An invoice generator for Etsy sellers. Boring? Absolutely. Profitable? Very.
On Reddit (r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur), people are posting about hitting $500 to $5K/month in recurring revenue from tools they built in a weekend. Not a month. A weekend. They're using AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Cursor, or Replit Agent to do the heavy lifting.
Here's the playbook if you want to try this:
Think about your day job. What's one task you or your coworkers do every week that's tedious and repetitive?
That's your product idea.
Use an AI coding tool to build a basic version in 1-2 days.
Throw it on Product Hunt or Reddit. Get 10 people to pay for it.
Iterate from there.
You're not selling "AI." You're selling people their time back. That's worth $20/month to almost anyone.
🛠️ Tool Spotlight
Claude Code
I'm biased here because I used this to build the automation behind this newsletter, but Claude Code is genuinely impressive if you're not a developer.
It's a command-line tool from Anthropic. You describe what you want in plain English — "build me a Node.js script that pulls RSS feeds and formats them into a newsletter" — and it just... does it. Writes the code, creates the files, installs packages, fixes errors. All in your terminal, all in your actual project folder.
It's not perfect. You'll still need to understand what it's doing at a high level, and sometimes you have to nudge it when it goes down the wrong path. But for someone like me who doesn't come from a coding background, it's the difference between having an idea and actually shipping something.
Who it's for: People who want to build real software without being a software engineer.
What it costs: You need a Claude API key. For a side project, expect $5-15/month in usage.
Bottom line: If you've been sitting on a product idea because you "can't code," this removes that excuse.
⚡ Quick Hits
12+ AI models dropped in a single week. The first week of March was insane — GPT-5.4, Claude 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Qwen 3.5, and a bunch more. The takeaway for us? More competition = better and cheaper tools. This is good news if you're building.
Oracle and Block just cut 24,000+ jobs because of AI. Oracle is dumping $8-10 billion into AI infrastructure. Block (the company behind Cash App) cut nearly 40% of its workforce. I'm not saying this to scare anyone. I'm saying it because learning to use these tools isn't optional anymore.
AI-made digital products are selling on Etsy. Template packs, prompt libraries, brand kits — people are making them with AI and selling them on marketplaces. Etsy officially allows it as long as you're creating from your own prompts. Low effort, recurring sales. Worth looking into.
Claude and Gemini are growing fast. According to a16z's latest report, Claude's paid users grew 200% and Gemini grew 258% in the past year. About 20% of ChatGPT's loyal users now also use Gemini on the side. Smart move — different models are better at different things.
💡 Prompt of the Week
This one's practical. If you want to brainstorm your first micro-SaaS idea, paste this into Claude or ChatGPT:
I work in [YOUR INDUSTRY]. Every week, I waste time on repetitive tasks like [LIST 2-3 TASKS]. I want to build a simple web tool that automates one of these.
Give me 5 micro-SaaS ideas that:
- Solve a specific, boring problem in my field
- Could realistically be built in a weekend with AI coding tools
- Could charge $15-50/month
- Target a niche of at least 10,000 potential users
For each idea, give me: the problem, the solution, who would pay, and a name.
Swap in your own industry and tasks. You'll be surprised what comes out.
💎 Starting next week, premium subscribers get a full prompt library — 5+ copy-paste prompts for making money, saving time, and building with AI. Details coming soon.
That's Issue #1. If you got something useful out of this, forward it to someone who's curious about AI but drowning in hype. That's who this newsletter is for.
See you next week.
— Jack
AI Money Moves — A weekly newsletter for people who build with AI.