How to make money with AI agents: what actually works

What an agent adds when money is the goal

A chatbot answers when you ask and then waits. An agent can do more of the job without you sitting there. The examples on this page use Hermes Agent, the open-source agent from Nous Research, which can:

• run jobs on a schedule, such as every weekday morning, and send you the result;
• use tools: search the web, drive a real web browser, read and write files, and work in apps you connect;
• remember your preferences and the facts about your work between conversations;
• write itself reusable instructions, called skills, for a task it does often (see how Hermes Agent skills work);
• answer you in a chat app you already use, such as Telegram, WhatsApp or Discord.

Those are the features that turn into money: work that happens on time without you, done the way you like it, reachable from your phone. None of them replaces knowing your trade.

Four ways that work, with the request to type

1. Sell a service you already know, but deliver it faster

If people already pay you for research briefs, first drafts, translations, reports, social post drafts or tidying spreadsheets, the agent can do the first pass and you do the expert part. You deliver sooner, or take on more work in the same week. An example request:

“Read the three PDFs I just sent and draft a two-page market brief for a café owner: local competitors, their prices and opening hours, with a link for every fact. Mark anything you could not confirm.”

It suits freelancers, consultants and translators. Where you stay in: you check every deliverable before it goes to a client. Your name is on it, and the agent can be confidently wrong.

2. Run the admin of your own business

Here the agent does not sell anything. It takes the routine admin so you can spend those hours on paid work. Typical jobs: answering customer questions on WhatsApp or Telegram from people who wrote to you first, drafting quotes and invoices, reminding existing customers of their appointments, comparing suppliers in a sheet, and a short summary of the day. An example:

“Every weekday at 18:00, send me a summary of today’s customer messages: who asked what, what you already answered, and what is waiting for me. Do not promise any price or date I have not given you.”

It suits shops, trades, salons, tutors and anyone who is the whole business. If customers message the agent directly, decide who is allowed to talk to it and connect only the apps those chats should reach (the WhatsApp guide covers who can message it). Where you stay in: prices, refunds, complaints and anything unusual come to you.

3. Set up and look after agents for other small businesses

This is the honest version of an “AI automation agency”. You install an agent for a business you understand, connect its chat app and accounts, write the skills and scheduled jobs that fit how it works, and then charge for ongoing care: checking the jobs still run, adjusting them when the business changes, and fixing what breaks. An example request you might give a client’s agent:

“Every Monday at 08:00, list this week’s bookings from the calendar and draft a reminder message for each customer. Save the drafts for the owner to approve.”

It suits people who already know a trade, say dentists or builders, and are comfortable with software. Clients come from referrals, your existing customers, your network and showing an agent you run for your own work. Where you stay in: you set clear limits on what the agent may do for each client, and the client approves anything sent in their name.

4. Watch what costs you money or makes you money

With a browser and scheduled checks, the agent can keep an eye on things you would otherwise check by hand: supplier prices, your stock levels in a sheet, listings that match what you buy or resell, and deadlines for renewals or tax returns. An example:

“Every morning at 07:30, check the price of these five items on my supplier’s site and tell me only if one has changed by more than 5% since yesterday.”

It suits resellers, shop owners and anyone buying the same things regularly. Where you stay in: the agent tells you; you decide and you buy. More on how it browses in the Hermes Agent browser guide.

What does not work, and why

• “Passive income” bots. An agent that earns while you sleep, with no skill or customers behind it, is a sales pitch. Keeping an agent running costs money, for the machine and the AI it uses, and it only pays back when its work is worth something to someone.
• Churning out AI-written pages or sites. Google Search’s published policies call it “scaled content abuse” when many pages are made mainly to manipulate search rankings rather than help people, AI-generated pages that add no value included. Sites that break the policy can rank lower or drop out of search results.
• Sending the same message to many people from chat apps. The Hermes WhatsApp guide warns that the unofficial bridge carries a risk of account restrictions and advises keeping use conversational. Telegram limits accounts that its moderators find writing unwanted messages to strangers. Let the agent answer people who wrote to you first.
• Fake reviews. In the United States the Federal Trade Commission’s rule bars businesses from creating or selling fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones that misrepresent a customer’s experience. Ask real customers instead.
• Letting the agent move money unsupervised. Paying invoices, placing trades or changing prices on its own is where a confident mistake costs real money. Have it prepare and alert; you press the button.

What it costs, and a simple way to tell if it pays

Running an agent has three kinds of cost:

• A machine that stays on. Scheduled jobs and chat apps only work while the agent is running. That means your own computer left on, a rented server, or a hosted agent.
• AI model usage. Each request uses an AI model, usually billed by how much it reads and writes. Jobs that read a lot, like long emails or many web pages, cost more.
• Any paid apps you connect, if you do not already pay for them.

Then compare it with what the agent gives back:

(extra paid hours you actually take on × your hourly rate) + costs you avoid, minus the monthly cost of the agent.

Example only, not a claim: if you charge $40 an hour, the agent saves you 3 hours of drafting a month, you fill those hours with paid work, and the agent costs $10 a month all in, it is worth 3 × $40 − $10 = $110 to you that month. If you do not fill the hours, you gained time, not money. If you rewrite every draft, it is worth minus $10. Use your own numbers.

Measure the hours honestly, including the time you spend checking the agent’s work. If that checking takes as long as doing the job yourself, the job is not a good fit yet.

Can you do it at zero cost?

Partly. Hermes Agent itself is free, open-source software under the MIT licence, so the software costs nothing. Two things still need paying for, or at least providing:

• Somewhere to run it. In Hermes, scheduled jobs and chat apps are handled by the gateway, a background process. When the machine running it sleeps or switches off, the agent stops answering and scheduled jobs miss their time; when it comes back, a missed run may be skipped rather than made up. An old computer you already own can do the job, but it has to stay on.
• An AI model. Some providers offer free tiers, but they come with limits on how much you can use them and which models you get, and they change often. Running a model on your own computer avoids the bill but needs capable hardware.

For “zero cost on Telegram”, the realistic version is: install Hermes on a computer you already leave on, connect it to a Telegram bot, and use a model you can afford. The guides on installing Hermes Agent and setting up the Telegram bot walk through both steps. If running a machine is the part you do not want, that is when a hosted agent fits.

A first-week plan

1. Day 1: pick one paid task you already do. Something people pay you for, or admin that keeps you from paid work. Note how long it takes you now.
2. Day 2: give the agent the draft or admin part. Explain how you like it done, with one good past example. Ask it to remember your preferences.
3. Days 3 to 5: run it for real and check everything. Write down the time you spent, including checking and fixing. Correct the agent each time; corrections it remembers are the point.
4. Day 6: compare. Put your numbers into the formula above. If it saved time, keep it. If not, try a smaller piece of the task or a different one.
5. Day 7: add a second job, ideally a scheduled one, such as a daily summary or a weekly check, so the agent works without being asked.

Making money with an agent on ReadyHermes

ReadyHermes runs your own Hermes Agent on a server that stays on, so scheduled jobs fire while your computer is off. A new agent is ready in about 10 seconds. What you get:

• chat in your browser, or connect Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, WeChat or Lark from the Channels panel, and have scheduled results sent there;
• connect apps like Gmail, Google Sheets and Notion, signing in to each yourself, and disconnect any time;
• add ready-made skills, such as a weekly report, a client proposal or an invoice;
• long-term memory, scheduled jobs, web search and a real web browser you can watch live and take over when it needs you.

You can try it free for 1 hour. After that, Lite is $3.99 a month (1 vCPU, 2 GB memory) and Pro is $6.99 a month (2 vCPU, 4 GB memory). These are offer prices, regularly $5 and $10, and they stay the same when you renew. Prices shown are the total you pay. Both plans include $1 of AI each month, and you can plug in your own key from an AI provider if you need more.

What it does not do: it will not find you customers, and it will not make your work correct. You still bring the skill and the clients, and you still check what it produces. More on what is included in managed Hermes Agent hosting.