How do you handle pass-through credits for services like Appify, Chatp, and Instantly? Do the credits come out of your build, and how do you set this up?
No—I just get the client to pay for it. When I say pass through, the clients are paying for it. If you want to set it up, you have to do it manually, which sucks. You could update it once a month. If you have their Stripe, you could theoretically auto‑build using Stripe after calculating monthly token usage, but I don't think that's a good idea. The credits don't auto‑build; they stay manual. If you want to do pass‑through, tell the client how much the tokens cost at the end of the contract and then handle it. If you need it ongoing, you need a way to calculate token usage automatically. It's annoying, so I don't recommend it. Snapo thanks me for the free game. I record videos with OBS Studio; zooming or switching views is done live, not in post‑production, which cuts editing time and removes the need to publish to post. I've been building and documenting an automation as well. The fastest way to scale depends on where you are. If you lack demonstrated value, inbound won't work—you need proven results. I've built two agencies, one at $92K and another at $72K, and my agency will soon far exceed those numbers because I've grown the team. I've shown success doing what most people want: starting an agency in the agency space. People want to know how to do that, make money with it, bootstrap, and do cold emails. I'm good at all that, so when I talk about it it's like listening to a bank robber rate his top 10 heists, Lionel Messi rate his top 10 plays, or LeBron talk about dunking. I'm not claiming to be the LeBron of AI automation, but I am the LeBron of AI automation in terms of experience. If you don't have equivalent experience, inbound won't work. Your oldest video is 10 months old; if you've made less than $20K in 10 months (about $2K/month), you'd be better off starting with cold outreach instead of documenting your approach. I hate to say it, but that's the truth. The fastest way to scale really depends on your starting point. Hopefully I've made my point clear. I didn't start with YouTube videos; I made money first, got good at delivering value, then realized I could talk about it for hours, found it affordable to create content, gained authority, and started making videos—and it worked.
Hey Nick, please answer the question. I built a lead conversion system, missed call, text back, whatever, and I'm writing paid ads behind it for mortgage brokers. Should I include paid ads? That's interesting. You're selling paid ads plus all of this, which is great—it's like a containerized package service. If you do, charge a media buy fee; a management fee is usually about a third of the media buy. For example, if someone spends $1,000 a month on ads, charge $300 a month. This lets you scale quickly and easily. I see Stephan's question is the same as the previous one, so I'll skip it. Tyler or Joel says thanks. Frank asks how to operate pass‑through credits for services like Appify, Chatp, and Instantly, whether the credits come out of your build, and how to set it up. No—I just get the client to pay for it. When I say pass through, the clients are paying for it. If you want to set it up, you have to do it manually, which sucks. You could update it once a month. If you have their Stripe, you could theoretically auto‑build using Stripe after calculating monthly token usage, but I don't think that's a good idea. The credits don't auto‑build; they stay manual. If you want to do pass‑through, tell the client how much the tokens cost at the end of the contract and then handle it. If you need it ongoing, you need a way to calculate token usage automatically. It's annoying, so I don't recommend it. Snapo thanks me for the free game. I record videos with OBS Studio; zooming or switching views is done live, not in post‑production, which cuts editing time and removes the need to publish to post. I've been building and documenting an automation as well. The fastest way to scale depends on where you are. If you lack demonstrated value, inbound won't work—you need proven results. I've built two agencies, one at $92K and another at $72K, and my agency will soon far exceed those numbers because I've grown the team. I've shown success doing what most people want: starting an agency in the agency space. People want to know how to do that, make money with it, bootstrap, and do cold emails. I'm good at all that, so when I talk about it it's like listening to a bank robber rate his top 10 heists, Lionel Messi rate his top 10 plays, or LeBron talk about dunking. I'm not claiming to be the LeBron of AI automation, but I am the LeBron of AI automation in terms of experience. If you don't have equivalent experience, inbound won't work. Your oldest video is 10 months old; if you've made less than $20K in 10 months (about $2K/month), you'd be better off starting with cold outreach instead of documenting your approach. I hate to say it, but that's the truth. The fastest way to scale really depends on your starting point. Hopefully I've made my point clear. I didn't start with YouTube videos; I made money first, got good at delivering value, then realized I could talk about it for hours, found it affordable to create content, gained authority, and started making videos—and it worked.
Yeah, so for big builds, don't just do it all in one shot; avoid big all-encompassing systems because scope creep usually leads to a situation where you haven't clearly defined what you’ll do for the client, which is impossible to specify ahead of time, causing the client to expect something you didn’t agree to for payment, breeding resentment and harming the relationship. Instead, start with a small starter project that’s tightly scoped and agreed upon by both sides, then vibe each other out to learn what the client likes and demonstrate your aptitude—this lets you pitch more later and gives you insight into their business before committing to a massive scope. If you’re doing this for a company and need to send 10,000 depersonalized emails, think logically: using Make, first you get the leads (one op), then you iterate through the leads (n ops), generate icebreakers (another n ops), and optionally upload to Instantly (another n ops) or bulk‑upload to Google Sheets (effectively one op). Roughly, that’s about three n ops, or two n ops if you use the bulk‑upload shortcut. For 10,000 records that works out to roughly 20,000 operations, give or take. As for the Make plan, the $34‑per‑month Core plan gives you 40,000 ops, plenty of headroom; you don’t need the Pro plan unless you want better error handling, in which case the Pro plan is $62. You can start with Core and upgrade later, paying only the difference. On a personal note, I’m about twenty minutes into this video and feeling locked in; I’ve gotten more done today than in the past week because I’ve committed to stop daily posting on my main channel. My growth has slowed—my first‑24‑hour view‑to‑subscriber ratio dropped from about 15% (≈15,000 views on 100k subs) to around 5% (≈5,000 views). Comments suggest this is because my niche‑specific content has saturated its audience, and broadening the topic would attract less‑interested viewers. Elrico noted that my recent videos repeat earlier material, which may also be hurting growth, and suggested exploring other tools besides Make, like voice agents and live builds. Parker joked about throwing me on while cooking to start a riot over quitting daily, and shared ideas such as adding an automation bucket for publicly traded codes to save Coinbase money, using customer‑support headcount as an input for percentage assessments, and targeting big logos to pull in the right audience. My daily updates channel now has about 5,600 subscribers, while the main channel sits at 110,750. I’m checking follower‑count tools like Trend Hero, though I’m not sure about the daily‑limit metric. Reflecting on all this feedback, I’ve decided to stop posting daily and instead pursue a multifaceted strategy: focus on what makes me unique—my calm, low‑production‑value, high‑signal‑to‑noise conversational content—and develop a new, less‑replicable format. With my team, we’ve decided to pursue the “complete and utter uncopyable thing”: building a business with this stuff in front of everybody, doing it extraordinarily well by spending time generating leads, selling them, securing proposals, onboarding clients, fulfilling projects, and growing the company. Nobody else can replicate that live business‑building demonstration. My earlier live video of starting and selling an AI service in ten hours went viral precisely because it proved I can generate leads on camera; it’s a litmus test for knowing how to do this.
I think we should start by clarifying terminology: I wouldn’t consider someone a client until they’ve paid money—or at least committed to paying for something, like a software subscription. Until money changes hands or an agreement is signed, it’s not a real client. Many people think a deal is closed when the prospect says yes, but it’s not truly closed until they sign or, better yet, pay the invoice. Saying yes is different from actually paying you. You said you started automation in November, learned it in two months, and since January you’ve only got two clients in the process of closing. Over roughly 60–70 days, if you’d done a daily outreach minimum—say 10 personalized Loom videos a day via Upwork, DMs, Instagram, X, etc.—you’d have contacted about 700 people. Yet only two showed interest, which is about 0.3% (2 out of 700), or roughly 1 in 350. That’s extremely low; to get one ‘yes’ you’d need to hear roughly 349 ‘nos’. If you’d done consistent, reliable outreach using the mechanisms I show in Maker School and on my channel (daily Loom videos, etc.), even if you were terrible at it, it would be statistically unlikely to get so few results. Typical response rates are around 2%, which would be about eight times better than what you’re seeing. So you likely reached out to far fewer people—maybe around 80 total, or about one per day. To improve, first be very clear about what ‘closed’ means—wait for payment or a signed agreement. Second, set a clear daily outreach minimum, like sending 10 customized Loom videos a day on platforms such as Upwork, Instagram, X, or via DM. Third, standardize your sales process: use a repeatable roadmap (like my ‘Roadmap to $25k a Month with Automation’) that funnels prospects into a meeting, then a sales call, then a detailed proposal or scope of work, and follow the same steps each time. Doing this builds infrastructure you can iterate on—run it for 10 clients, tweak, run another 10, and you’ll see conversion rates improve. That’s what I’d do if I were in your shoes.
The first point: you're claiming the video editing market is saturated. I'd say there are far more new market entrants in AI than in video editing, and many are applying AI to video editing, changing the economics. Is AI just automation drag-and-drop backends, AI agents, or does it encompass all knowledge work? If so, there are many entrants, making it very saturated. However, I like highly competitive markets because they suggest opportunity and money to be made; competitors often do a poor job, so with a little first‑principles thinking you can be vastly better. For example, Upwork is saturated but the average proposal is terrible spam. By improving basic elements—profile picture, message bubble, cover letter, spelling/grammar—you can stand out and dominate. When you do that, you don't need to worry about cheap hourly rates because you'll be in the top 1% of the 1%, following a power‑law distribution. How to charge for outcomes with video editing: I often get pitched outcome‑based deals. The better outreach is to say you've managed channels for big names or done editing for any video, letting you claim views from those channels (even if the views came from brand growth). You can guarantee improvements in metrics like watch time or CTR. For instance, guarantee a lift in average watch time. You take their starting statistic over the last 90 days, run your service for a set period, build a relationship while editing, and by the end they'll know and like you, having worked with you. If you're a thumbnail designer, you could guarantee CTR improvement. Finally, how to start selling with no proof: use the service on your own business. If you were selling cold email, you'd run it on your own business, generate opportunities (e.g., 28 meetings in 4 days for an IT or software firm), then bootstrap that into proof with each client you work with.