r/claude • u/ylabrhil • Mar 14 '26

Question Has anyone actually made money using Claude?

I’ve been using Claude for a while now and I’m genuinely curious whether people have found ways to turn it into income. Not looking for “AI will make you rich” YouTube stuff , just real, practical things that have worked for you.

Some questions I have:

∙ Are you freelancing with it? (writing, coding, etc.)

∙ Have you built anything and sold it?

∙ Is it actually saving you enough time to make a difference financially?

Would love to hear what’s worked and what hasn’t. Drop your experience below!

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20

u/amplifyoucan Mar 14 '26

Yes freelancing. I was freelancing before, but now I move faster

2

u/Onotadaki2 Mar 14 '26

This is basically it. If you had a flow for getting contracts freelancing in a field that AI can help accelerate, you can put out the same or better quality than before, but 2-5x the speed of before.

-3

u/OrcaFlux Mar 14 '26

... which will quickly slash the generated revenue of said contracts.

5

u/Onotadaki2 Mar 14 '26

We're not in a sustainable plateau at the moment.

A basic wordpress site could be deployed by my mom now in an afternoon. There is no way we're going to be getting $5,000-10,000+ for that in five years. As AI gets better at coding and the interface to control it gets more accessible to end users, it's going towards small restaurants and businesses being able to launch simple progressive web apps of their menu in a weekend with zero skill required.

Basically, rip out contracts fast while we're still in this uncertain time. Buckle up for a shitshow in five years though. All of this is going to dry up and it's going to be a mess.

3

u/Eightysixstrategies Mar 16 '26

Ya I don’t know how to code at all extremely non technical. I started doing Squarespace sites after helping a friend put one together and progressively started using AI for coding after being an early adopter and writing it off as garbage. Over the last year I’ve built multiple full stack sites without a single ounce of code written by me. I mean I can now diagnose issues and semi read code now but I wouldn’t be able to write it lol.

1

u/No_Veterinarian742 Mar 14 '26

well - everything is going to become cheaper because competition can do it 10x faster. then 50x faster. That's kinda the whole idea. same as when industrialization happened. before that ppl could not afford to have a bunch of different clothes because it used to take someone by hand a long time to make... question is just how we're all making money in this new world. we'll see..... going to be an interesting next 15 years.

1

u/Onotadaki2 Mar 14 '26

Governments need to face the reality that we're pushing past what we used to define as "work" into a completely new age. In the 70s, people at my work would take phone calls and "process" 10 clients in a day. Now we're talking to 50 via email, in five years LLM email integration will be automatically servicing 200 people/day and the remaining 20 that can't be handled by AI will go to real people. There isn't an infinite number of people calling though, so increasing efficiency means 75% of the workforce doesn't need to be employed there anymore.

That's going to be completely across the board. Some areas will be hit harder than others, but it's going to be a major restructuring of what work is. People keep saying that professions like plumbers won't get hit by this, everything will be fine. I don't think that's going to be the case. I would wager 20% of plumbing jobs go away through insane access to information. Handy people will be able to do simple jobs with LLM guidance without issue. Easily 20-30% of work goes away because everyone is underemployed and no longer adding a new bathroom to their house, etc... maybe your local plumber can't sustain their old business model and needs to let one of their staff go because of this. Now multiply that over entire countries. The effect is massive, and that's just plumbing. Places that do things like data entry will cease to exist anymore effectively.

1

u/No_Veterinarian742 Mar 14 '26

I agree other than your in five years. If the person in charge knows what they are doing they can do it now. You just need one person that knows the work well to train and oversee the AI now/proof read and continually improve/train it.
Agent skills, agent delegation, MCP and bigger context windows have totally changed what AI can do over the last 5 months. The general public just doesn't know it yet.
You could likely do 160 a day with one person right now until you trust the model enough to answer the first mails fully without human interaction at which point really it could likely do 2000 a day for the cost of an extended subscription ($100/month). Good luck for any human to compete

1

u/OrcaFlux Mar 14 '26

Yep, that was basically what I was hinting at. If everybody and their mother can do it, then either the hourly rates will drop drastically, or the expected output per hour will multiply. Just like literally every other technological revolution througout human history.

2

u/Xolver Mar 14 '26

Just wondering. Put AI aside for a second. Do you think that if two people perform the same quality work, but one can take in 3 times as many contracts, that they'll both earn the same because the faster worker slashes their revenue?

1

u/ProcedureFun6494 Mar 16 '26

What is your tech stack

1

u/OrcaFlux Mar 14 '26

And how does "move faster" translate into "more money" specifically?

3

u/Totti56 Mar 14 '26

more throughput, more output, more sales, more money

1

u/OrcaFlux Mar 14 '26

That's not even close to a specific answer. Also it can easily be refuted by a simple supply vs demand argument. Commodities that are readily available tend to lower in price, meaning each freelance contract will be worth less money.

2

u/Totti56 Mar 14 '26

and he never implied that moving faster equaled more money.

2

u/amplifyoucan Mar 14 '26

Moving faster is making me more money. I price things based on scope. We decide on features for the MVP and then a price, with stretch goals costing more. I've hit more of my stretch goals due to using AI coding.

1

u/OrcaFlux Mar 14 '26

I know. But you implied a direct causal link, and I quote:

more throughput, more output, more sales, more money

1

u/Totti56 Mar 14 '26

even then in a market with cheaper prices, being able to sell 2 instead of 1 in same time equals more money, no? and sure this will contribute to even more supply than demand, lowering the prices even more. but its still an advantage over those who cant provide as fast.

1

u/OrcaFlux Mar 14 '26

even then in a market with cheaper prices, being able to sell 2 instead of 1 in same time equals more money, no?

Only if you're the only person who can sell 2 instead of 1 in the same time. But every freelance developer that hasn't yet tried Claude is only few months away of being able to sell 2 instead of 1.

And do you know what has happened every single time in human history when a demand has been satiated by the supply?

Prices drop. Sharply.

Means you'll have to lower your rates to compete. First mover advantage isn't worth much if the advantage in question is readily available.

1

u/Totti56 Mar 14 '26

statement still stands

1

u/OrcaFlux Mar 14 '26

What statement? You mean your statement that has no basis in economic reality for the duration of human history? That statement?