How to Make Money as an AI Influencer

What is an AI Influencer?

An AI influencer is a computer-generated character designed to create content and interact with people via media. Primarily these online personas are active on Instagram and TikTok, but they can just as easily be utilized to garner a following on YouTube, X (formerly known as Twitter) Snapchat and other platforms where IRL influencers cultivate an audience.

While the concept has been possible before as an avatar-online format, improvements in AI technology mean the barriers to entry have been lowered and many more people can create an ‘influencer’ of their own. Characters of this sort have the ability to guide their audience’s thoughts, actions and purchasing choices.

What’s desirable about ‘owning’, operating or roleplaying as an AI influencer is the potential it opens up for paid opportunities. While much of this is currently unchartered territory, there’s a whole host of monetization methods that have been around forever – and now you have the perfect way to access them without having to show your face, voice or anything that actually relates to the real you.

Note: I am specifically talking about roleplay AI influencers where real people manage the accounts day-to-day. Others create fully automated AI influencers that post and respond to messages via chatbots and other tools. I don’t do that, so won’t talk about it.

Ethical Concerns About AI Influencers

Before I discuss the ways to monetize an AI influencer it’s extremely important to highlight the concerns surrounding them as a concept. These concerns aren’t just for the people viewing your output – it’s for you too, so pay attention before you go any further.

Disclosure

Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. It’s never been more true now AI has improved to its current levels. You can make unimaginable images of anything – things that aren’t possible but look completely real. So what happens when you don’t tell people it’s AI?

Home interior influencers can pretend to have the most luxurious house imaginable, then renovate it in the very next post.

Travel influencers can vacation in places with the clearest seas, most scenic views and explore incredible terrain. But none of it exists.

Food influencers can make culinary masterpiece daily without even opening their refrigerator.

Fitness influencers can create false body transformations that take them from unfit to the dream body in seconds. 

The dangers are real. It’s going to be hard navigating the internet when this becomes more common, so think about how you present your content to your audience.

Societal Impact

Instagram filters have been blamed for contributing towards poor body image of young people for as long as it’s been around. Snapchat filters can add, remove and take away whatever you want in your pics. Photoshop is able to remove blemishes in an instant, reshape you and make you look like literal perfection.

What happens when floods of ‘perfect’ women start flooding the internet? Exactly. It’s going to exacerbate an already growing problem and perpetuate the idea that certain features, looks and aesthetics are undesirable. I don’t know what can be done to resolve this, but be mindful.

Stolen Content

Stealing content is a straight up no-no in many industries, but it’s so much more important in the world of AI, which already has a reputation for profiting off other people’s hard work. Deepfaking someone else’s images or videos to use as your own will eventually get you in trouble.

The ‘victim’ may not be aware today, but copyright specialists will be lurking very soon and will clean up on everyone that swipes content in this way – especially if it’s being used for adult content. Don’t get yourself on the wrong side of a lawsuit for the sake of one little IG post.

Fraud

Straight up, AI imagery is going to lead to more believable ways of defrauding people. From the outset if you are posing as a woman but you are actually a man, there’s reason for your audience to be suspicious of you. If you push things further and start conversing with your audience under this persona, how prepared are you to keep these lies up?

Every AI influencer profile needs to be labelled as such. If you are a virtual influencer make people know that. If not, you’re entering a slippery slope towards actual fraud. You’re not a criminal. Stay on the right side of the law.  

AI Influencer Personas

Your identity as an AI influencer is everything. They are not real, but there’s a real person behind them. You have the ability to brand them, give them personality, interests, desires and ambitions. All of that will shape the content they create and share to their audience.

What’s your influencer like? Are they…

• Spontaneous?
• Adventurous?
• Curious?
• Shy?
• Ambitious?
• Opinionated?
• Outgoing?
• Flirtatious?
• Timid?
• Quirky?

Who are they? Have they got a job? Are they in a relationship? What’s their star sign?

The more you add to the backstory, the more believable it is to the audience. It’s way easier to play the role if you’re prepared from the very start.

A lot of the most common AI influencers are simply models with no depth to them. Consider what makes your influencer different from any other on Instagram.

If your grand idea is that you’re going to create the freakiest girl on IG, be aware that Instagram loves shutting down sex workers. The platform isn’t forgiving if they believe you pushed their guidelines too far.

AI Influencers vs IRL Influencers

There are major positives of creating an AI influencer instead of just attempting to become a content creator yourself (or managing one).  

My experience is broad and includes a big overlap with influencers and adult content. I have been an influencer marketing consultant for over a decade and I worked as the business development manager to someone’s OnlyFans business.

I know influencers. I know how much influencers are paid. I know how to grow influencer pages. I know how to make more money for adult content creators. I will admit that AI influencers are a newer territory to me, but I know all the components to make a success in this area.

As I’ve been informed with both, I can make comparisons between the two:

Benefits of AI Influencers

• Perfect aesthetics – no need to sort out your scene, no hair and makeup prep
• Adaptability – be a slob and a fitness babe simultaneously and evolve in any way you decide
• Infinite content – hundreds of unique pics can be made in a couple of hours to spread out the content over several weeks

Drawbacks of AI Influencers

• Significant video content limitations – AI video is improving but there’s so much that simply isn’t possible… yet
• Influencer opportunities – real influencers get gifted products, they get invited to events, they get paid in return for showcasing real products in action
• Tainted perception – no one likes being tricked and there’s an element of deception simply by roleplaying like this – even if you’re open about it

Best Ways to Make Money as an AI Influencer

Promotional Posts

Real life influencers get sent on trips, get endless deliveries of free products to post about and get offered cash for posting content. The first two may be out of the question right now, but the latter is probably the reason you wanted to have an AI influencer of your own.

Brands pay for promotion. If you have a significant number of followers and high engagement, there are companies out there willing to use that platform for their benefit.

Assuming Instagram is your main platform, promotional posts may be grid posts, reels or stories in which you promote a product, service or company. How you achieve this is the tricky bit because most of these posts would typically have a particular product in-shot, but that’s for you to figure out. 

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate programs offer rewards for referrals. When you have a platform, generate engagement and know how to make people take action, affiliate marketing allows you to monetize it effectively. Many of the world’s most popular retailers have affiliate and referral programs including Amazon, ebay and Etsy.

There are a fair few affiliate programs that specifically cater to AI influencers too, but it’s up to you to find the ones that fit best with your influencer’s niche, persona and content output. 

Print on Demand

If you know how to make graphics with AI, you should have a print on demand business on the side. Make merch with your favorite image generator and get paid monthly by the likely of RedBubble, TeePublic and CafePress. Where do AI influencers play a part in this? They can model your clothes for you. Use them for mock ups and drive traffic to your designs.

They could be the owner of a fashion brand. They could be building it as their little side project. Use your creativity to bring this to life and you could generate a passive income stream selling physical project.

Exclusive Content

If you can make compelling content that your audience wants to engage with, paywall the best bits. Premium content can come in many forms but the most common method is by selling erotic imagery. Take the clothes off.

The best ways to get paid regularly as an AI influencer is through one of the following two platforms:

Patreon

It’s a flexible, reliable and reputable place to share your best content and get rewarded for it. It’s a great way of building a community and getting your audience to get behind ‘you’ as a creator. Offer benefits to regulars and bonuses for those that want more.

Fanvue

Fanvue is effectively OnlyFans for AI. (Real people can use it too by the way). It’s a very personal way to interact with your followers and give them an intimate experience. There are others out there but none of the other options are on this level.

Tips

Tips are where the real action happens. When you’re making content that your audience really likes to see, they will throw money at you. Think of these as something completely different to premium content – these are just people that want to look out for you.

They want to help you pay bills, live a little and continue to create content. If you make a sugar baby, expect to receive a lot of these.

Again there are lots of good platforms to receive tips, but many are not sex worker friendly. Never ask for tips via Venmo, Cash App, PayPal or even through Amazon gift cards, because you can get stung. The one I recommend and use for all of my online personas is Wishtender. Wishtender’s added benefits are that you can enable repeat purchases, goals and remain 100% anonymous from your tippers.

Best AI Influencer Niches to Make Money

AI influencers can infiltrate absolutely any niche that any other influencer can. It’s fine if you want to be a lifestyle influencer, but unless your content is phenomenal, it’s not specific enough. Become the sexiest baking creator, transform into the horniest fashion blogger, be the spiciest female bodybuilder. There’s nothing stopping you.

Here’s a list of lucrative influencer niches and it’s up to you to decide what suits your needs best:

• Fashion
• Beauty
• Travel
• Luxury
• Fitness
• Home
• Food
• Tech
• Gaming

Bear in mind that you will make significantly better content if you focus on the things you actually know about. Don’t overlook male influencers. You can roleplay as the perfectly groomed version of yourself and make bank sharing content about your own interests.  

How to Grow an AI Influencer Account Fast

Numbers are everything on social media. They mean a lot when it comes to influencers. Your engagement is your currency, so you need to build a community that feels willing to interact with your content and will constantly want more from you. The more followers you have, the more chance you have to build relationships and start profitable connections with your fans.

What sets you apart from other AI influencers? Perception is everything. If you’re all pumping out very similar pics, the differentiator is how much people are liking and commenting what you put out there. So how do you get to that point? Bad news. You really have to put in that work.

The following applies to Instagram, TikTok and X but will be very relevant if you are using other platforms too:

• Optimize your profile. Make sure it’s easy for people to find you, make a bio that inspires people to follow.
• Post high quality content. It has to be high quality. It can’t have mistakes like bad hands. The captions have to be on point. You have to vary it up.
• Use hashtags effectively. This depends on your niche, but make sure you use the hashtags that people are most likely looking for when they are searching for a profile like yours. All the social media platforms reward accounts that generate interaction.
• Run competitions. Give people the chance to win a gift card or something similar in return for a follow and like.
• Cross post. Post across multiple different platforms and drive people towards the one with the most leverage, or the one they use the most.
• Engage with your audience. Don’t just stand on a platform – get down and interact with the people that want to talk to you.
• Optimize your posting time. Figure out when your audience is online most and post when they’re most likely to see it.
• Collaborate. Reach out to other people and do posts together that benefit all parties.
• Join a pod. Engagement pods are groups of people that mutually bump up each others’ numbers with likes and comments. There are loads for Instagram and probably elsewhere too.

How To Make an AI Influencer

It’s never been easier to create an AI influencer. While I won’t give an extensive breakdown here, I will say that every single one of the images in this post were made in seconds using Midjourney. I just wrote descriptions of what I wanted to see and the AI image generation tool did it for me. It is by far the best tool for many the most realistic image of hot girls.

But Midjourney has a few problems for AI influencer content, namely:

• Consistent characters
• Explicit content restrictions
• No video creation facilities

That’s why I have to turn to a tool that can do it all. The realism isn’t quite on the same level, but it’s very passable and a lot of people seem to be making convincing AI influencers with them – Seduced.AI (aff).

Another major benefit is that it not only allows you take clothes off your girls, you can make them get dirty too.

AI Influencer Making Money FAQs

Can AI influencers make money?

AI influencers have the ability generate income just like real ones but there are key differences between the two. For example, an IRL one could monetize with OnlyFans but an AI can’t. However there are a number of different alternatives, such as promotional posts, affiliate marketing and more. All the best methods are shown above.

Do you have to make videos to make money with AI influencers?

Videos can make AI influencers a lot more believable and realistic, but some of the most profitable AI influencers haven’t posted a single motion video on their social media profiles at all. Engagement is the key thing. If you can drive engagement without videos, don’t worry about videos because they take much longer to make.

Can AI influencers have an OnlyFans page?

OnlyFans does not accept adult AI influencers. OnlyFans requires that all of its creators provide identification information to be accepted onto the platform. You have to prove that the content you are posting on the platform is your own. Creators that mix AI in with their real life content (that actually looks like them) can get away with this, but a man roleplaying as a female AI influencer can’t.