How To Outsource AI Content Creation 3x Cheaper With Freelancers
AI Maker Case: Content Creation with AI & Upwork freelancers
👋 Hey, I’m Daniil, and welcome to a ✨ Maker Edition ✨ of Creators’ AI. It’s our zero-ads & promo edition with interesting Makers & Founders disrupting different industries with AI and sharing their journey with us! To get full access to our content, consider upgrading.
Today, our featured guest is my friend and great expert in various fields - Ken Leaver, aka
. In this edition, Ken highlights his insights into making content with freelancers 3x cheaper and 5x faster with the help of AI!Hi! So I’m Ken, and I’ve evolved from consultant (ex-BCG) to commercial person (CEO of Groupon Ukraine back in 2011-12), to product person (2nd to CPO of Lazada Group from 2015-17) to agency owner for the past few years.
I’ve worked with 100+ Upwork freelancers on content in the past three years and think that there is great power in combining them with AI tools.
I like to see my key strength as understanding the combination of tech, business, and content very well, as I’ve been on all sides.
For example, I think content is the new way for startups to get initial traction. And that startups should iterate on content first… before iterating on product.
Client Case: Authentick
Let me give you an example with a client. Authentick, which is a Menyala company (the venture builder owned by Temasek).
They aim to sell NFTs on popular ecommerce marketplaces… like Lazada, Shopee, etc. Whereas typically today, people buy them on NFT-specific marketplaces like OpenSea.
The thought was that selling on normal eCommerce platforms would open the audience to new groups of Web2 users and thus grow the entire market.
But there are a lot of assumptions built into this. Will Web2 shoppers who have never purchased an NFT be interested? Will it be simple enough for them to do? Etc.
And so, while they were building the product… they asked me to start on the content side to begin to find their audience. So, I started their YouTube channel and a TikTok channel.
My goal was to find out if there are people interested in this. And if so, who are they? And how many of them are there?
Putting together the process
I needed to be able to create content quickly and inexpensively, as the budget was not huge.
So, I hired a bunch of video editors on Upwork and began giving them some initial videos to start. I asked them to use AI tools like Dall-e and Midjourney to create the images.
And I used Clickup to make the process scalable.
Clickup allowed me to set up a process to test out 20+ different video editors without too much admin from my side. And I’d keep the top 8 or so.
This is a real example video we’d create. We also made hundreds of short forms that we use not only on YouTube Shorts but also on TikTok and Instagram Reels.
What do you think of this video? Share your feedback in the comments section!
The Power of AI in this process
AI is really at the heart of each step in the value chain. Let me explain.
First, in determining good topics to use. I will typically use ChatGPT to come up with this.
Then, I will ask ChatGPT to give me the exact script.
Then, the Upwork creator will use ChatGPT / Dall-e to come up with images to use in the video.
Then, they will add the AI voice by pasting the ChatGPT script into ElevenLabs and getting the audio file.
They assembled the video using something like Capcut to assemble the script with the various image files. And perhaps add music.
Finally, they will finish off by creating a thumbnail using Dall-E.
And Voila! A video is ready to be uploaded to YouTube!
AI vs. The Old Way of Creating Content
The old way of creating videos like this would typically entail several different folks:
A scriptwriter
A voice-over artist
A video editor
And you would have to spend a lot of time checking and coordinating the work of these folks.
As a result, when you create a short video (<60 seconds long) the old way… it would typically:
take you at least a week to make
cost you about $100 - 200 to pay the three folks mentioned above
and take you 3-5 hours of your own time to coordinate all of these activities
Now, with this new process using AI, we can:
make these videos in 1-2 days
at a cost of about $30 - 40 each
and it will take us about 1 hour of our time to coordinate everything
Sharing is caring! Refer someone who recently got into the journey of AI. Make them more productive and earn rewards!
Want to create your own content like this?
Ken offers this type of content creation as a service now and tries to be 3x better than the other agencies you’ve used or seen in the past.
Why it works?
The process is easy to start
There are no special meetings or documents required from the client.
Instead, Ken joins the client team’s meetings (e.g., the marketing team) and aligns on the content priorities.
The process is transparent
Everything is done in a Clickup account with full client access.
The client can chime in and provide an opinion anytime.
Flexibility
The client can ask to change direction anytime so that content strategy can be adjusted in real time.
The client can also choose to be involved in the process or barely be involved.
Cost-effectiveness
Clients provide their own Upwork accounts to hire freelancers with no margin on top.
There is a monthly budget, and we stick to that. Then, the client can track and see how the budget was spent in Upwork.
A monthly retainer and success fee (e.g., based on views) is negotiated based on how much effort is involved in managing the process.
We are always learning
The critical thing with Ken is that he is constantly studying and learning from the top creators in the business on how to get better.
Ken also comes from an analytical background, so he is constantly analyzing the performance of videos to see how they could be improved.
Are you willing to try Ken’s AI Content creation service?
I have previously worked with Ken in creating eCommerce content for YouTube and may tell you that Ken knows well what he is talking about. He is definitely in the right direction in AI Content workflows with freelancers. I think creators and agencies not using AI will be far behind AI-powered Creators! Minimizing costs by AI + Freelancers could be applied to numerous industries and cases. Share this post with other Creators so their case can appear in our newsletter!
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