I have been writing, publishing, and selling ebooks long before ChatGPT appeared.

It has been a solid business model - nothing spectacular but a genuine little cash machine that compounds with every additional ebook.

The old model looked roughly like this:

• invest
  • 100+ hours writing and marketing a high-quality ebook -- or hire a good ghostwriter
  • $100 to $1,000 into editing
  • another ~$100 into a strong cover
• publish on Amazon and other marketplaces
• build a small marketing engine around it
• get paid for years

Strictly speaking, it's not passive income but front-loaded labor aka. delayed income.

But the math can be juicy.

A book might require $1,200+ of time and money upfront.

If it earns $100/month for 4 years, that is $4,800 back from one asset.

In my case, many books have done better. Some have been selling for much longer than four years. I have published under my own name, and also under pen names in niches I found interesting (e.g., parenting).

Last month, I had a crazy day (!) where one of my long-tail parenting books made $365 (99 units sold x $3.7 profit per unit).

To be clear: this was not a normal day for the book.

But together, all books I created have been a semi-passive and reliable income stream that I wouldn't miss. 

Now the book I just told you about - guess how much I invested into creating it?

Less than $20.

Both the cover and the book itself was made in a few minutes via ImagineYourBook.com.

I still came up with the idea. I guided the generation. I created three versions before I was happy. I tweaked and checked the final version before publishing.

But from idea to publication, I spent less than 3 hours.

I went back to my time-tracking spreadsheet to confirm because I almost didn't believe it myself.

For normal people like myself, simple business systems like this is the real AI opportunity. (As opposed to creating the next SpaceX