May 8, 2020

How To Make Money With Chatbots

Since the world health experts are advising people to self-quarantine and avoid coming in contact with large crowds. It will be best to generating multiple sources of income especially in these times of ‘Social Distancing’

Even simply starting an email with hoping that all is well with you, is better than a cold, impersonal opening to an email, right?

There are several cultures around the world where greetings are instinctively followed by an enquiry of the other person’s wellbeing.

However, sales is a numbers game and having conversations with thousands of people when only a few hundred will convert into sales is not really a practical use of your time and certainly isn’t a viable form of passive income.

Fortunately, there’s a tool you can learn to use that’ll save you time while making you money. If our guide to making money from chatbots doesn’t answer all of your questions, hit reply (to this or any email from us) and let us know!

TL;DR

Passive Income – once you’ve got your bot working, it will earn money and close sales with little futher input from you
Passive Income (2) – if you’re technically minded, you could create chat bots for others and sell them like you do with Stock Photography
Low-cost – the set-up cost for a chat bot is extremely low
Easy – no specialist skills are required to make a successful Bot
Modest Earnings – in big markets, Chatbots could add up to $10,000 to your bottom line. More if you are selling them
Big Picture – chatbots are most successful when used as a tool to support another business model (think eCommerce)
Up-Front Work – it takes time to research and plan for a successful chatbot, but initial work will pay for itself many times over

What Is A Chatbot?

A chatbot is exactly what it says on the tin – a robot that chats. If you’re now picturing the Terminator using Snapchat, then you’ve got a little far. It’s just an artificial intelligence (AI) program that can mimic human interaction through a text chat.

Chances are you already knew that – chatbots have been around for long enough now that most people with a bit of internet savvy do. You’re here to find out how to monetise them to provide you with a source of passive income. Well there are a number of approaches you can use, the main ones being:

– Affiliate marketing

– Surveys

– Advertising

– Sales

– Customer support

You may have noticed that most of these approaches are in support of other business models. The last three, in particular, are supporting eCommerce, helping to get people into and down the sales funnel for a product that you’re selling. This and the first item in the list are business models we’ve discussed in previous guides, so you may need to go back to those in order to check how to set up a business that a chatbot can support.

However, it’s also possible to make money just from developing the chatbot. You won’t need to do any hard coding – we don’t mean developing in that sense. Instead, you would be training the AI to give specific responses to specific input in order to create a smoother and more lifelike experience for the user. You could then simply sell your bot or, better yet, give it to another business in exchange for commissions on any leads and sales it helps to generate. The latter of these is harder to negotiate, but will generate a truly passive income for you.

Alternatively, you could keep the bot and put it to work gathering survey data. Big businesses are desperate for data to help them understand their customers and their wants and needs. With that data, they can create more impactful marketing and minimise friction in the sales process. Incidentally, survey bots are also pretty easy to program since they’re only required to walk users through a series of structured questions. That brings us to the question: How do you make a chatbot? More importantly, how do you make a profitable one?

How To Start Developing Chatbots

The first step, as with most passive income streams, is to choose your niche with care. There’s no shortage of choice since chatbots can serve all sorts of purpose. You could help the education industry with bots serving language schools or career guidance councillors, the travel industry by automating bookings and feedback, restaurants by assisting with table bookings and orders – the list goes on and on.

The factors that drive your decision about which industry you want to serve with your bot will depend on what company you want to work for and what subjects you have the most confidence in, since you’ll need a certain amount of specialist knowledge in order to create a convincing and successful chatbot.

Once you know exactly what function you want your bot to help serve, you need to plan out the conversation it will have. At the core of your conversation plan should be the bot’s primary goal, whether that’s generating leads, gathering survey data or whatever. What does a successful conclusion to the conversation look like and how are you going to take someone from a greeting to that conclusion?

You will need to flesh out this skeleton by considering the audience. Depend on the industry and company you’re working with, the typical target audience may respond better to formal or informal language, may respond well to emojis or may find them childish and inappropriate, may ask specific questions that you’ll need to answer, and so on. For example, if you’re working on a bot for the medical industry, sticking a smiley-faced emoji on every response is probably a bit tone-deaf while more formal, professional language will be appreciated.

With your detailed plan prepared, you can head to one of the well-established chatbot generators and program in your conversation.

These include:

– ManyChat

– Collect.chat

– Facebook Messenger

– Chatfuel

Follow the instructions you find on these platforms and you should have a bot ready in a relatively short time. No coding skill is required – just the subject knowledge required to give your bot a sense of authority and authenticity and enough of an understanding of human nature to predict the flow of the conversation.

Once you put your bot to work for your client (or for yourself) whatever context you agreed upon with them, it should be able to run itself, with no further input or activity from you. An occasional modification or update may be required as your business needs change, social trends evolve and bugs emerge, but you potentially charge maintenance and support fees for that, giving you additional income.

Chatbot + Human – The Perfect Solution for ANY Business

One of the latest trends in the Chatbot market is the combining of the Chatbot plus real human experience.

It works like this:

You have your AI Chatbot setup and running as described above
You also have a team of human consultants sitting behind the scenes – potentially even 24/7
When a visitor selects a certain answer, sets off a key trigger or simply asks to speak to a real person – one of the agents is notified and within 60 seconds the customer is now dealing with a real person on your team

This approach can be used in a variety of ways, with customer service being the obvious first example – but when you also include revenue generating actions, it becomes very, very interesting indeed;

A real person jumps in and closes your sale
Or your front-liners validate and prepare the lead, keeping it warm for your sales team to start their working day
Or your retention team is able to save the customer from leaving or cancelling

We have literally worked with 100’s of businesses of all shapes, sizes and budgets to develop custom solutions.

Affordable, round the clock coverage
Fully trained and experience representatives
English or multi-lingual representatives
Plus we can help you create the most optimal and bespoke Chatbot AI process to suit your business

Get More Deals | Close More Sales | Increase Your Revenue | Retain Most Customers | Provide A Better Customer Experience

>>> Ask Us How – Learn more about how we can help you grow your business with a Chatbot + Human customer and sales experience

Things to Consider when working with Chatbots

Making money from chatbots is going to be a numbers game since not everyone responds positively (or at all) to them. One that is well designed will certainly encourage more users, but you’ll ultimately need thousands of interactions to get just dozens of successful conclusions. This means that you will need to generate a lot of traffic onto the bot’s platform, meaning you may need to employ SEO, sponsored ads and other digital marketing techniques to start earning money with a chatbot.

As a passive income stream, chatbots have the potential to be very profitable, with some boasting over $10,000 earned in a single month. However, your exact income will largely depend on your chosen niche and the success rate of your conversation plan, so investing more time into the planning steps will pay off later. Furthermore, remember that five-figure successes are inevitably going to be outliers while a more typical monthly earning is going to be in the low four-figure range at best.

How Much Does It Cost To Get Started With Chatbots?

Fortunately, regardless of how little money your bot ends up making, the return on investment is generally excellent. It costs extremely little in either time or money to create a chatbot and it can run itself at no cost indefinitely. There is therefore little risk involved in giving it a try and, if you’re successful, it could net you a modest but sustainable passive income.