Hey humans 👋🏼

Do you remember AI Business Idea 10?
Create an AI Influencer ➡️ Read it here

Well, guess what?
Someone actually did it and made it profitable.

Meet Ben (33). Just a regular dude with a marketing background who built AI influencer girls from scratch and turned it into a real money-making machine.

Here’s the quick breakdown ⬇️

🧠 Who: Copywriter with 10+ years in marketing and gaming
📅 Started: End of 2023
🛠 Tools: Fooocus, Colab, RunDiffusion, Photoshop, FaceApp
📈 Growth: All organic, no paid traffic
💸 Revenue: Fanvue PPV (girlfriend experience)
⛔️ Mistakes: Twitter bans, wrong model switch
💬 Advice: No shortcuts. Learn the tools. Do the work.

Now here’s the full interview, word for word ⬇️

1. Who are you and what triggered the very first idea of building AI influencers?
I'm Ben, 33 years old copywriter who has 10+ years experience on marketing, social media and gaming. I saw couple of AI influencers in end of the 2023 - they were first examples of it. So I see the potential and start learning.

2. When did you first realize this could make serious money, was there a specific moment?
Yes, but like this. I'm good at marketing, but I like "organic traffic" better. So, when I understand this AI tech will be better and better, I was sure money will follow it. But this was never about money, still it isn't. It's about quality, art, business making.

3. What’s your unfair advantage? Something you do differently from everyone else?
Time. I worked 24/7 on this while learning everything in first 7-8 months last year. I'm a person who focusing on projects - not an advantage, but yea.

4. Let’s talk first steps, how exactly did you launch the first AI model? (tools, workflow, rollout)
I learned SDXL on Fooocus. I used Google Colab and RunDiffusion because I didn't have a good GPU back then. Social media marketing and creating organic traffic/reach.

5. Can you break down exactly how you grow each Instagram account from 0 to millions reached?
Everyone ask this and I understand why. But there is no "golden" rule, and if someone says they know it, they're lying and they're trying to get money from you. Not just AI influencer but every social media project should follow only one plan: Quality content, consistent posting, following platform rules.

6. What are your current top-performing monetization methods?
PPV sales on Fanvue. People are buying content from models while getting girlfriend experience.

7. Which tools are absolutely essential in your daily workflow, from image generation to chat ops?
Fooocus for SDXL generations (locally), Forge for Flux generations (locally), Photoshop for edits (locally), FaceApp for final touches (app on iPhone).

8. What’s the biggest tool or AI model switch that gave you a big jump in revenue or efficiency?
Flux is a big jump in terms of realism, but it didn't give me a revenue bonus. SDXL content working better for me, because I'm better at it than Flux. Not a tool but main breaking point was hiring chatters and open Fanvue accounts and leave Patreon.

9. How would you start over today with $0, but full knowledge, exact roadmap?
I would do same thing. Quality model and content creation, social media management, patience (a lot), consistent posting, NSFW content creation, and chatting experience.

10. Biggest mistake or failure in the last 10 months and what did you learn from it?
Two things: my two models had pretty big Twitter accounts back in the day. I answer all the DMs with links, and they got banned. So I lost like 10 million reach on that. And second one was switching to Flux for one model, because her SDXL content was so good. People didn't like the Flux face.

11. What’s something you spent too much time or money on that wasn’t worth it?
I'm not sure if there is any. I spent 1-2 hours daily now and business doing good.

12. Can you share one growth hack that made the biggest difference to your business?
Like I said earlier, there is no hack, no golden rule, no weird things. Work like you own it, do not try to make quick money. It won't work.

13. How do you test and launch a new character like Sienna, step-by-step?
I have three models, and they're all connected. So I don't do any testing other than asking couple of friends etc. I have a good experience on what people will like or not - not just AI models, but in general.

14. What do you see as the biggest bottleneck in scaling beyond $100K/month?
Time. I have a small team and running 3 models right now. I can invest more and have a bigger team, but I don't want to give away my workflow. So, that's why I'm not going crazy.

15. What advice would you give someone who wants to build their first AI influencer this weekend?
Don't rush. Don't use any platform which says "make your ai influencer easy" or something like that. Learn the craft, tools, understand technical side.

Quick Note..

Ben didn’t want to share links to his models (makes sense).
But you can check out his Reddit post if you want to explore more 🔍

⚙️ Wanna try this hustle? Here’s your starter toolkit:

🧠 Image Generation

• Fooocus – Easy local SDXL generation

• RunDiffusion – Cloud-based if you don’t have a strong GPU

• Leonardo.Ai – For fast, clean generations + upscaling

🎨 Editing & Touch-Ups

• Photoshop – Pro-level control

• FaceApp – Fast facial expressions & aging filters

📱 Social Media Growth

• Metricool – Schedule posts, track engagement

• [Notion or Airtable] – Plan content & storylines for each model

• Pallyy – AI-friendly Instagram scheduler

💬 Chat Simulation & Fan Management

• Fanvue – Monetization via PPV / subs

• Taskade – Team management if you scale up with chatters

• Tidio or Crisp – Add AI chatbot layers to landing pages

So see you tomorrow.
Kevin & Felix 🌳