ChatGPT: What Is It and How Can I Use It to Make Money?
As the artificial intelligence (AI) industry continues to advance, more tools with advanced capabilities continue to join the market daily. One popular AI software that’s common among writers is ChatGPT.
You’ve probably heard of or used this tool a few times in your content creation process.
When it joined the market in November 2022, there was so much hype around it. So, What is ChatGPT, and why is it so popular in the AI world?
Here’s everything you need to know about this AI tool as a writer and how you can use it to increase your online income.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a conversational AI software developed by the AI giant, OpenAI. Its free version is based on the GPT-3.5 language model.
The suffix ‘GPT’ stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer; currently, the latest language model of the GPT series is GPT 4 — which is currently available in ChatGPT’s paid version, ChatGPT Plus.
GPT 3.5 is among the large language models known for impressive language processing and the ability to generate detailed responses based on prompts.
The main goal of ChatGPT is to engage in dynamic conversations with users, just like natural human conversations. The software has been trained using vast text data from different sources, enabling it to understand different topics and questions.
ChatGPT can perform tasks like:
- Writing articles
- Answering questions
- Providing explanations
- Offering suggestions
- Engaging in casual conversation
- Creating outlines
- Setting up tables
Who Owns ChatGPT?
As mentioned, ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company based in Silicon Valley.
The company was founded in 2015 by two tech gurus—Elon Musk and Sam Altman, supported by other prominent investors like Greg Brockman.
On 30th November 2022, they launched ChatGPT, and in just five days after launch, it surpassed 1 million users. The AI tool gained 152.7 million visits by the end of that first month and currently has over 1.6 billion users.
The user feedback has been quite positive so far!
How Does ChatGPT Work?
ChatGPT works through a language model pre-trained and fine-tuned to simulate natural human conversations.
During pre-training, the software is fed with a large amount of text data containing information from diverse sources like books, articles, websites, and journals. It learns the language patterns and relationships between different text parts, like words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Once pre-trained, ChatGPT undergoes fine-tuning based on human feedback to help it adapt to the desired behavior. This enables it to respond to different contexts and produce better responses based on human evaluations.
When you interact with the tool, you input a prompt (or instructions), and it uses its trained knowledge and understanding to generate a response.
Here’s an example:
Unlike most AI tools, ChatGPT doesn’t process queries in isolation. It remembers previous conversations and considers the context before it responds. This way, its output takes the form of an ongoing conversation.
This popular AI software can handle a wide range of conversational tasks like providing customer support and offering human-like interactions with users.
For writers, it can generate various types of content like blog articles, social media posts, email copy, and other marketing material.
Note that ChatGPT cannot surf the internet for information and, therefore, does not provide real-time data. Up to now, the model can only provide information up to 2021.
What are the Features of ChatGPT?
ChatGPT has many features that make it a powerful AI tool. Here are some of its notable features you can benefit from as a writer or a content creator:
- Natural language understanding: ChatGPT can understand natural language input and use it to process and interpret queries. This enables it to produce meaningful answers and engage in meaningful conversations.
- Large knowledge base: It can generate responses on various topics due to the vast information it’s fed during training. From medical inquiries to nuclear bombs, I don’t think there is a topic on earth that this AI tool can’t respond to.
- Contextual responses: The language model can give accurate answers based on the context of the conversation. It considers previous interactions to create relevant and coherent responses, which sounds more like an ongoing human conversation.
- Flexibility: ChatGPT can handle various conversational tasks, including answering questions, offering recommendations, providing explanations, problem-solving, and engaging in casual chat.
- Translation: The AI tool can translate text from one language to another, making it useful for multilingual communication.
- Creative writing: It can also generate creative text like short stories, poems, and fictional content.
- Text summarization: You can ask ChatGPT to summarize a long passage into a shorter, more concise version.
- Code writing: If you’re a programmer or web developer, you can also use this AI tool to generate code snippets for your development projects.
Since it’s continuously being refined, we expect ChatGPT to have even more advanced features and capabilities in the future.
Is ChatGPT Free to Use?
OpenAI offers a free version of ChatGPT and paid access to its premium version, also known as ChatGPT Plus.
The free version is open for everyone to use without any cost, as long as you have internet access through your computer or smartphone. However, it gives you access to a lower GPT version (currently GPT 3.5) and has less features.
On the other hand, the subscription plan (ChatGPT Plus) has a monthly fee that subscribers pay. As expected, the plan offers more benefits to subscribers than they can get from the free version.
For instance, with the subscription plan, you can use the platform even during peak times; you get quicker responses and priority access to new features.
The paid version uses GPT-4 language model, which is more intelligent generates more accurate responses than the free version’s GPT-3.5.
What’s the Price of ChatGPT Plus?
Currently, ChatGPT Plus goes for $20 per month
I’ve always been a huge proponent of using AI to maximize revenue for your clients. And for the longest time, I’ve been using Jasper.
However, since I tested ChatGPT Plus, I shifted to it for ideation, customer support, research, and writing emails, social media posts, ads, etc. I don’t use it to write clients’ or my own blog posts, though. I still love the human aspect to such!
If you generate a large amount of content monthly and would like to use the platform even when it’s at capacity, you might want to upgrade your membership. However, if the free version works just fine for you, don’t feel pressured to upgrade.
How Can I Use ChatGPT to Write Content?
Since it came into the market, ChatGPT has made a significant impact in the writing industry.
Unfortunately, millions of writers have lost their jobs as their clients have opted to use AI to write the content themselves. While some writers sank, others have embraced clever ways of using AI to impress their clients and continue to thrive amid uncertainty.
So, how can you use ChatGPt to write content? Here’s how:
Step 1: Create your account
Go to the ChatGPT website.
Create a free account.
Step 2: Log In
After creating your account, log in and you’ll see the chat interface.
This mode lets you interact with the platform and get text output based on your prompts.
Step 3: Input a prompt
To start generating the content, enter a prompt, a question, or a brief text on the text box and press ‘enter.’ This is just like chatting with a real person asking her to do stuff for you.
For example, you can enter a prompt like, “What is the fastest way to get out of debt?”
Or, “Create a comparison table showing how humans react to different temperatures.”
The prompt sets the context for the model to understand what you want to write about and uses that to bring an output.
Step 4: Provide detailed instructions
Once it generates a response based on your prompt, you can provide follow-up instructions or questions for it to provide a more detailed response.
For instance, you can tell it to ‘include these keywords, make it 100 words, make it interesting, or include specific examples’.
Similarly, you can ask ChatGPT to make the content longer by adding more depth or to summarize and make it shorter if you don’t need so much detail!
Example:
In the screenshots below, I asked the question, “How do businesses benefit from content marketing?”
This was the first response:
Since it was too long and had too many details that I didn’t need, I asked the ChatGPT to ‘make it shorter’ and here was the second output:
Step 5: Be specific with your prompt
Sometimes, the response generated may not be perfect or exactly what you need.
In that case, you should play around with your prompt by providing more specific information until you get the response you like.
Step 6: Review and revise
Carefully review the content generated and edit it to ensure it meets your requirements.
Also, proofread for grammar errors and fact-check to ensure the information provided is accurate before publishing it anywhere.
Generally, as a content writer, you can use ChatGPT as a writing assistant to create:
- Blog posts (Only if your client asks you to)
- Article outlines
- Content ideas
- Emails
- Social media posts
- Website content
- Edit and optimize content
Remember to use AI only as a writing aid rather than a replacement for your original creativity and expertise.
Does ChatGPT Generate Accurate Content?
The accuracy of ChatGPT-generated information often depends on the prompt, the topic’s complexity, and the context of the conversation.
Like humans, the AI model is imperfect and may occasionally produce inaccurate or misleading information.
Some reasons for this may include:
- Unclear prompt: If you give it an unclear or ambiguous prompt, it may generate wrong answers or answers that have irrelevant information.
- Biased input: If you provide biased or misleading instructions, the software may also exhibit biased behavior and generate biased responses.
- Complex content: Sometimes, ChatGPT may fail to understand the context of your conversation and provide ambiguous information.
AI can also “hallucinate”, meaning it can confidently give you fictitious information in a way that sounds so real.
To avoid the implications of these inaccuracies, it’s always important to perform some fact-checking to ensure the output is accurate before using it (especially if it includes statistics).
How Can I Use ChatGPT to Make Money?
AI is currently among the must-have tools for every content writer wanting to make it big in the industry. And if you’re still confused about which AI tool to use, ChatGPT is among the best.
Here are some productive ways you can use this AI platform to generate income:
1. Content creation
ChatGPT can help generate high-quality written content for websites, blogs, or social media.
If you have a personal website or blog, you can create a large amount of content and monetize it through sponsored ads or affiliate links.
You can also use it to create high-quality articles, product descriptions, or social media posts for others and earn from it.
Once again, remember that for client work, you’d rather use ChatGPT for ideation, outline creation, research, and even getting ideas on angles to take. However, make sure the content is totally your own.
If the work is for your own projects, fact-check and edit heavily to make it more human. You can add stories, statistics, current news, examples, case studies, etc., to make your content richer.
2. Copywriting
If you’re a copywriter, ChatGPT can also help you create persuasive marketing copy to help businesses increase their sales and conversions.
This can include creating marketing content for landing pages, sales emails, ads, etc. AI does so well in this, sometimes even better than an average writer.
Remember always to tailor the content to match the unique needs of the target audience.
3. Marketing
Like me, you may be doubling up as a digital marketer on top of content writing.
You can use ChatGPT to brainstorm and generate ideas for marketing campaigns, product descriptions, email campaigns, and social media ads (e.g., Facebook Ads).
It can also help you conduct market research or analyze data for your clients to provide them with valuable insights about their target markets.
It can serve as your marketing side-kick — where you ask her for ideas and analysis, and then when you agree with what she creates, you tell her to start implementing it. Together with her (ChatGPT), you can become an unstoppable marketing machine.
4. Tutoring and education
ChatGPT can help you create educational content like online courses and ebooks, which you can sell at a decent amount.
If you’re a tutor, the software can help you create relevant content outlines for tutoring in various subjects and languages.
5. Customer support
In addition to content writing, ChatGPT can enable you to offer other services to your clients, like customer support.
In that case, you can use the tool as a chatbot to provide automated customer support for businesses, reducing operational costs.
6. YouTube and TikTok video scripts
Video content has become very popular, especially among the younger generation.
If you’re passionate about a particular topic, you can create a YouTube or TikTok channel and share video content with your target audience.
In that case, ChatGPT can help you write amazing video scripts which you’ll use to create videos and monetize.
Advantages of ChatGPT in Content Writing
ChatGPT has become a valuable tool for content creators and businesses due to its many advantages.
Let’s explore some of its key benefits in content writing.
- Saves time: ChatGPT can generate content in a matter of seconds, saving considerable time for you to handle other tasks.
- No more writer’s block: If you’re experiencing writer’s block, it can provide new ideas, fresh angles, and suggestions to explore in your writing.
- Diversity: Due to its intense training, the AI tool can create content on various topics and help creators reach a broader audience.
- Consistency: The AI writer can maintain a consistent tone and style throughout the content it generates. This can help you maintain a cohesive brand voice.
- Improved writing: Even if you are not a good writer or lack confidence in your English skills, ChatGPT can help you create grammatically correct and well-structured content to portray you as a good writer.
- In-depth research: It can help you explore niche or complex topics that may require extensive and time-consuming research.
- Cost-efficiency: For many business people, AI tools like this reduce the cost of outsourcing content creation or hiring additional writers.
- Workload management: Generally, ChatGPT can help you manage high workloads or tight deadlines by quickly generating outlines and drafts. This leaves enough time for other essential tasks like in-depth research, editing, and publishing.
- Easy to use: ChatGPT’s interface is simple and easy to use. One doesn’t need any technical knowledge to use the software.
- Training: You can literally train yourself using the software. For example, you can paste your entire article and ask it to tell you where mistakes are. It can even rate your content and tell you how to improve.
Limitations of ChatGPT
Like any other technological tool, ChatGPT has some limitations besides its impressive advantages.
Here are some of them:
- The software doesn’t remember previous interactions beyond a few prompts. Therefore, it can produce responses that lack context or coherence when involved in longer conversations.
- Sometimes, ChatGPT answers may sound relevant but are factually inaccurate or nonsensical answers. However, most of the time it will answer correctly.
- ChatGPT may produce lengthy or redundant responses, particularly when asked open-ended questions.
- The language model cannot interpret or understand visual content like images, graphs, or charts. This makes it unsuitable for tasks that require analyzing or describing visual information.
- As an AI language model, ChatGPT can be exploited to generate biased or inappropriate content, which may be offensive or discriminatory.
With these limitations in mind, never underestimate the need for human input and critical evaluation when using such a tool to create content.
Will ChatGPT Replace Google?
No. It’s unlikely that ChatGPt will replace Google since they serve fundamentally different functions.
Google is basically a search engine used to retrieve information from the internet. It indexes web pages and helps users find the source of content they need.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, is a language model that uses human input to generate content. It can perform diverse tasks like content creation, language translation, and chat support.
Google is quite comprehensive and indexes billions of web pages covering a wide range of topics. Also, a simple Google search can provide you with real-time data as soon as it’s uploaded on the internet.
With ChatGPT, the scope is relatively limited to the knowledge provided during its training. Therefore, it can’t provide real-time data — it’s currently limited to information uploaded up to 2021.
While ChatGPT can’t replace Google, it can only act as a complementary to enhance human-computer interactions and make content available whenever needed.
Conclusion
ChatGPT is one of the best technological tools developed in the world of artificial intelligence. With its high efficiency and time-saving abilities, it has revolutionized the way writers create content.
Now, you don’t need to spend hours staring at a black page on your computer due to writer’s block. Neither do you need to burn the midnight oil doing mundane tasks like finding content ideas, creating outlines, or doing extensive research.
However, remember you should only use AI tactfully and only when necessary. Too much use can derail your original creativity as a writer. Also, ensure you get consent from your clients before using ChatGPT to write their content.
Always proofread, fact-check, and inject your human perspective and experiences to make the content more original and authentic.
Finally, note that well-done human-written content is still better. AI has not beaten humans at writing.
