AI Side Hustles Mostly accurate, with one big caveat

By the Income Reality Check Editorial Team · Updated 2026-10-26 · 7 min read

Nate Herk’s “7 best AI tools” video: a $300/month stack sold as income

Verdict: Mostly accurate, with one big caveat. The tools are real and the paid relationships are disclosed — but a monthly cost stack is being framed as a path to income.

Nate Herk’s channel, “Nate Herk | AI Automation,” put out a video titled “I Tried 100+ AI Tools. These 7 Are the Best,” and at 84,547 views it’s doing what these roundups do: funneling curious viewers toward a shortlist of apps. There’s no “$10,000 a month” headline here. The pitch is softer and, honestly, more credible — these are the seven tools Herk says he’s used consistently for “a year and a half, two years” to run his business. Is the list legit? Mostly. The caveat is what the framing does at the end, when “tools I use” becomes “join my community and earn income on the side.”

What the video actually claims

The seven picks are Claude Code and Codex (counted as one), OpenRouter, a Hostinger VPS, Grokbot, Glydo, key.ai, and trigger.dev. Herk calls Claude Code and Codex “the number one biggest lever in my business” and says they drive “about 90% of my daily workflow.” The rest fill specific gaps: OpenRouter routes requests across model providers from one account, the VPS keeps automations running when his laptop is closed, Grokbot and trigger.dev run scheduled jobs, Glydo handles voice dictation, and key.ai is pay-per-use image and video generation.

Two things stand out, and both are to Herk’s credit. He discloses that Hostinger sponsored a segment (“Hostinger is sponsoring this part of the video, but I’d have it on the list either way”). And he discloses an equity interest in Glydo (“full disclosure, I am a partner in Glydo”). He also hedges honestly: “this is my list… if your [business] is doing different things than mine, then this exact list might not be the best one for you.” That’s not the language of a hard sell.

So what’s the catch? It isn’t dishonesty about the tools. It’s the quiet pivot in the last minute, where the video closes by inviting viewers who want “to build a business or just earn some income on the side” into a free “kit” and a paid “plus community.” The tools are the warm-up. The business is the ask.

What the method actually requires

Start with the part the video never totals up: the bill. These are subscriptions and metered services, and they stack. Herk says he pays for both Claude Code and Codex — and that he leans on them heavily. Heavy use of Claude pushes you past the $20 Pro tier into Claude’s Max plans at $100 or $200 a month, and ChatGPT’s comparable high-usage tier (Pro) runs $200 a month. Add the server, the schedulers, and the metered image and model routing, and the picture looks like this:

A beginner copying the setup at entry tiers might spend $80–$120 a month. Someone replicating Herk’s actual usage — two AI subscriptions at their higher tiers, a VPS, schedulers, plus metered routing and image generation — is realistically looking at $300–$450 a month before earning a dollar. Note also the renewal trap on the VPS: Hostinger’s introductory KVM rates roughly double at renewal (KVM 4 jumps from $12.99 to $28.99), a standard hosting-industry pattern that intro pricing hides.

Money is only half of it. Several of these tools do nothing until you build something in them. OpenRouter is plumbing — it routes requests for automations you have to design. trigger.dev “just runs your code,” which presumes you (or an agent you’re supervising) wrote and debugged TypeScript that does something valuable. A VPS is an empty computer in the cloud. None of this produces output, let alone income, on its own.

Who actually wins this game?

The person who wins most reliably is the person making the video. Herk’s revenue doesn’t come from these seven tools generating passive cash — it comes from the business built on top of them: a YouTube channel, a disclosed Hostinger sponsorship, an equity stake in one of the recommended products, affiliate links in the description, a free lead-magnet “kit,” and a paid community. That’s a legitimate creator-economy stack. It’s just a different stack from the one a new viewer would be buying into.

That gap matters because the viewer’s position is inverted. For Herk, these tools are cost centers that support a profitable audience business. For a beginner with no audience, they’re cost centers supporting… nothing yet. NerdWallet’s rundown of creator income is blunt about the sequencing: affiliate commissions and brand sponsorships are real revenue, but they arrive after you’ve built a following, not before (brands typically start reaching out once a creator has a meaningful, engaged audience). The tools don’t shortcut that. They assume it.

What you’d realistically earn

Here’s the honest answer: the video doesn’t promise an income figure, so there’s no specific number to debunk — and that’s the fairest thing about it. But the closing invitation (“earn some income on the side”) implies these tools are a lever toward money. On their own, they aren’t. They’re a cost of roughly $80 to $450 a month with a return of exactly zero until you’ve built a product, a service, or an audience that people pay for.

If you’re a freelancer or small operator already billing clients, folding Claude Code or trigger.dev into your workflow can genuinely cut costs or hours — that’s real, measurable value, and it’s the strongest part of Herk’s case. If you’re starting from zero expecting the stack itself to generate income, expect to spend months and several hundred dollars before the automations you build are worth more than the subscriptions running them.

U.S. readers should also know the regulatory backdrop. The FTC’s Operation AI Comply in September 2024 targeted schemes that promised “easy wealth” through AI — one defendant, Ascend Ecom, allegedly took at least $25 million by claiming AI tools would earn consumers “thousands of dollars a month in passive income.” The agency has separately proposed rules requiring sellers of money-making opportunities to substantiate earnings claims, with civil penalties reaching tens of thousands of dollars per violation. Herk’s video doesn’t make a specific earnings claim, which keeps it well clear of that line — a useful contrast with the harder pitches the FTC actually goes after.

Who this is (and isn’t) for

This video makes sense for someone who already runs a small business or client-services operation, has a few hours a week to build and maintain automations, and can comfortably absorb $100–$400 a month in tooling that replaces more expensive software or saves real labor time. For that person, Herk’s picks are a reasonable, well-tested shortlist. It does not make sense for someone with no audience, no product, and no budget cushion who’s watching because the title and the channel name promise “income on the side.” For that viewer, the tools are an expense in search of a business — and the business is the part no app can hand you.

What to remember

The seven tools are real, Herk clearly uses them, and he’s refreshingly upfront about the sponsorship and his stake in Glydo — which is exactly what the FTC’s influencer disclosure guidance asks for. The one caveat carries the whole review: this is a monthly cost stack presented inside an income frame. The tools are inputs. The income is a separate project you still have to build, and the person most reliably earning from this video is the one who made it. If you want more on where AI genuinely does and doesn’t produce money, see our looks at 5 proven ways to make money with AI and how AI changed the way one creator makes money.

Views and figures above were accurate at the time of review and may have changed since publication.