Let’s be honest for a second.

If you hang out even a moment on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, every second video is someone yelling about “making 10K/month online” with:

• dropshipping
• affiliate marketing
• or now… “just use AI and get rich”

The result?
Most people don’t have a business model.
They have a folder full of screenshots, saved videos and conflicting advice.

In this article we’re not going to talk about “side hustles” in general. Instead we’ll compare three concrete models side by side:

• Dropshipping
• Affiliate marketing
• AI-powered ebooks & digital products

…and ask one simple question:

Which of them has a realistic chance of getting you to $100K if you’re solo, don’t have a huge budget, and don’t want to spend your life doing customer support?

 

🌐 Everyone Talks About “Making Money Online”. Very Few Talk About the Model.

💸 The $100K question nobody really answers

“Make money online” doesn’t really mean anything by itself.

$100K can mean:

• $100K revenue and $95K in costs,
• $100K on a single screenshot that only happened once,
• or $100K per year, consistently, from a model you can repeat.

Most content online shows you:

• revenue (because it looks sexy),
• or a single “viral” month.

Almost nobody talks about:

• profit,
• risk,
• how many moving parts a model has,
• and how much of your life it consumes.

⚠️ Why “start any side hustle” is terrible advice

Advice like:
“Just start any side hustle”
is great for algorithms.
For you? Not so much.

Not every model:

• scales the same way,
• has the same margins,
• or carries the same level of stress and fragility.

If your goal is $100K (not “100K views on TikTok”), then the choice of model matters.

📦 The 3 models most people bump into first

Usually, the order looks like this:

1. Dropshipping – “order from AliExpress, sell higher, the rest is magic”.
2. Affiliate marketing – “promote other people’s products and get commission”.
3. AI-powered everything – “write ebooks or content with AI”.

From the outside, all three look tempting.
Under the hood, they are completely different games.

📊 What $100K Actually Looks Like in Real Life (Not Just on Screenshots)

Before you pick a game, let’s talk numbers.

💼 Revenue vs profit vs stress levels

Let’s say your target is $100K per year.

That might be:

• $100K with 10% profit → $10K in profit and a lot of headaches,
• or $100K with 80–90% profit → $80–90K in profit and far more breathing room.

The number on a Stripe screenshot doesn’t tell you that story.

Ask yourself:

• How much is left after all expenses?
• How much time and energy does each $1,000 actually cost me?
• What happens if something breaks (ad account, supplier, affiliate program)?

🧾 The difference between a $100K year and a $100K-looking screenshot

$100K year means:

• repeatability,
• a process,
• something you can improve and run again.

$100K screenshot might be:

• one campaign,
• one-time “hit”,
• or revenue where most of it was swallowed by costs.

It’s not about hating on screenshots.
It’s about understanding what they really represent.

📌 Leverage, complexity, and risk – the 3 levers that matter

In any model, you can ask three questions:

1. Leverage: Does my work keep working 24/7, or do I have to constantly babysit it?
2. Complexity: How many moving parts are there? The more, the more can break.
3. Risk: What happens if something fails? How much money / time / sanity do I lose?

Now let’s run these questions through the three models.

 

📦 Dropshipping – The Fastest Way to Turn “Passive Income” into a Full-Time Job

📈 On paper: simple store, hot product, run ads

The theory:

1. You find a “hot product” on TikTok.
2. You set up a store on Shopify.
3. You run ads.
4. Money comes in, you “scale”.

That sounded a lot more realistic in 2018 than it does today.

🔥 In reality: ad costs, returns, angry customers, payment holds

In practice:

• Ad costs keep going up.
• Margins after fees and refunds are painfully thin.
• Customers wait weeks for packages → chargebacks, refunds, angry emails.
• Payment processors can hold your funds “for review”.

Instead of “passive income”, you often get:

• customer support chats,
• supplier issues,
• logistics headaches,
• and the feeling you’re constantly putting out fires.

🧮 The hidden math: low margins, high risk, tiny room for error

Simplified example:

• Sell price: $40
• Cost from supplier: $15
• Ads: $20 per sale
• After fees and refunds: a few dollars left

To hit $100K in profit, you need:

• huge volume,
• a product that “hits”,
• and the ability to survive returns, chargebacks, and seasonality.

Is it possible? Of course.
Is it the best model for a solo creator who wants simple, high-margin income?
You can probably guess the answer.

✅ When dropshipping can make sense (and when to avoid it)

Dropshipping can make sense if you:

• treat it like a serious e-commerce business,
• have budget and patience for constant ad testing,
• accept low margins and high operational complexity.

If you’re looking for:

• simplicity,
• high margins,
• and few moving parts…

…there are better options.

 

🤝 Affiliate Marketing – Great in Theory, Fragile in Practice

🎣 The appeal: no product, no support, just commission

From the outside, it looks like gold:

• You don’t create a product.
• You don’t handle support.
• You simply recommend and get a commission.

Sounds like maximum leverage.

🏗️ Building someone else’s asset instead of your own

But here’s the problem:

• The product is not yours.
• The customer list is not yours.
• The brand is not yours.

You’re actually building someone else’s business in exchange for a slice.

If:

• the program lowers commissions,
• the program shuts down,
• you lose your main traffic source,

…your income can vanish overnight, and you’re left without an asset to rebuild from.

💥 Algorithm changes, program shutdowns, and vanishing income

Worst-case scenarios in affiliate marketing include:

• Google / YouTube / Meta algorithm changes slashing your reach,
• affiliate networks changing rules or collapsing,
• your top program suddenly ending or rebranding.

The “passive” income turns out to be more fragile than it looked at first.

📎 Where affiliate marketing actually works best

Does that mean affiliate marketing is bad? Not at all.

It just means it’s best used as a layer, not the entire foundation.

It works great when you:

• already have your own audience or email list,
• already have your own product (like an ebook or course),
• and promote tools you truly believe in as a supplement.

In that setup:

• you have control,
• you’re building your own asset first,
• and affiliate offers are bonus, not your entire business.

 

📘 AI-Powered Ebooks & Digital Products – Tiny Costs, Big Margins

Here’s where things get interesting.

♻️ Creating once, selling forever (or close to it)

AI-assisted ebooks and PDFs are:

• one file,
• created once,
• sold many times.

No:

• warehouse,
• shipping,
• printing,
• minimum orders.

💰 90%+ margins and zero inventory

Production and delivery costs are almost zero.

• You create with AI → the cost is mainly your time and tools.
• You sell digitally → the platform takes a small cut or fee.
• Delivery is automated.

In practice, that means very high margins – often 80–95%.

Which means with $100K in revenue, you might keep $80–90K in profit, not $10K after warehouses, shipping, and ad spend.

🚀 Why AI is a “force multiplier”, not a magic button

AI won’t build the business for you.

But it will:

• speed up research,
• help with structure,
• generate drafts,
• suggest examples, frameworks, and checklists.

Instead of spending three months writing, you can create a clear, valuable guide in days. Instead of staring at a blank page, you use AI as a “turbo assistant”.

Your role:
direction, quality, and decisions.

📄 The 52-page PDF that did $96,870 in 90 days

To make it concrete:

I created a 52-page PDF, using AI to:

• design the structure,
• generate draft content,
• speed up the writing.

Net writing time: less than 2 hours.
Result: $96,870 in 90 days from that one ebook – no inventory, no physical products, no one-on-one services.

It wasn’t luck. It was a model: problem → solution as an ebook → simple, scalable funnel → traffic.

 

📌 Want to See How This System Actually Works?

When I stopped chasing “cool sounding models” and focused on AI-powered ebooks, everything got simpler.

That 52-page PDF, written with the help of AI in less than two hours, generated $96,870 in 90 days.
No warehouse. No team. No 50-product catalog. One clear problem, one solution, one file — and a system around it.

In my ebook “Zero to $100K with AI. Teo’s Method”, I break this system down step by step: from choosing the right problem, through using AI to build the solution, all the way to a funnel that sells 24/7.

👉 See what’s inside “Zero to $100K with AI. Teo’s Method”

 

⚖️ Side-by-Side: AI vs Dropshipping vs Affiliate (Risk, Profit, Control)

In short:

• Dropshipping – many moving parts, low margins, high operational stress.
• Affiliate marketing – high potential leverage, but zero control over the product or customer.
• AI-powered ebooks – few moving parts, high margins, full ownership of the asset.

⏱️ Startup cost: money vs time vs skills

• Dropshipping: needs budget for testing ads, tools, samples, etc.
• Affiliate: can start with almost no money, but you need reach or traffic.
• AI ebooks: minimal cost (tools + focused time), in exchange for a concrete digital asset.

📉 Profit margins and how many sales you actually need

• Dropshipping: margins can be single digits. To make $100K profit, you need huge volume.
• Affiliate: some programs pay 20–50%, but you don’t control the offer or price.
• AI ebooks: if you sell a $37 ebook with 80–90% margins, you need far fewer sales to reach $100K.

📁 Who owns the customer and the asset

• Dropshipping: you technically own the customer, but you depend on suppliers and platforms.
• Affiliate: you don’t own the customer — the company you promote does.
• AI ebooks: the customer is yours, the list is yours, the product is yours. The entire asset belongs to you.

😬 Stress level and “oh sh*t” moments in each model

• Dropshipping: blocked ad accounts, returns, shipping issues, support fires.
• Affiliate: programs shutting down, rule changes, disappearing income streams.
• AI ebooks: the biggest worry is whether the product hits — but financial risk is tiny because you don’t have inventory or huge up-front costs.

 

📚 A Closer Look at the AI Ebook Path

When you lay the three models out side by side, things become pretty clear:

• Dropshipping: low margins, high stress, dozens of moving parts.
• Affiliate marketing: zero control over product, price and customer list.
• AI-powered ebooks: small costs, high margins, one asset you fully own.

My ebook “Zero to $100K with AI. Teo’s Method” is built entirely around that third option — the one with the best effort-to-upside ratio. It’s not a hack; it’s a method: niche → ebook → funnel → traffic → scale.

👉 Learn the $100K AI ebook model step by step

 

❓ The Real Question: How Do You Want to Make Your $100K?

At this point it’s not about “does it work?”.
All three models can make money.

The real question is:
How do you want to make your $100K?

📦 Do you want to babysit suppliers, shipments, and refunds?

If the idea of:

• chasing suppliers,
• tracking packages,
• handling chargebacks and refunds,

already makes you want to close your laptop, dropshipping might not be your game.

💸 Do you want to be paid a cut to grow someone else’s business?

If you:

• like recommending tools and products,
• but hate the idea that all customer data and most of the profit go elsewhere,

then building everything purely on affiliate marketing may frustrate you in the long run.

📘 Or do you want a simple digital asset that you fully own and control?

AI-powered ebooks give you:

• a product you can create once and sell many times,
• full control over price, offers, and customer relationships,
• the ability to stack other offers (bundles, courses, consulting) on top of the same core asset.

It’s a cleaner, simpler path to $100K than most of the models that get more noise online.

 

🧩 The $100K AI Ebook Model in a Nutshell

Let’s reduce it to a simple framework.

1️⃣ Step 1 – Pick a painful, specific problem in a hungry niche

Not “how to be a better person”.

More like:

• “How to create a profitable AI ebook in 48 hours”,
• “How to get your first 10 clients as a new coach”,
• “How to start making money with X without showing your face”.

Concrete pain. Concrete outcome.

2️⃣ Step 2 – Use AI to create a solution-focused ebook fast

AI helps you:

• map out the structure,
• generate chapter drafts,
• add examples, workflows, and checklists.

You then:

• decide what makes sense,
• add your own stories and experience,
• polish for clarity and practicality.

3️⃣ Step 3 – Package it like a premium shortcut, not a textbook

Your ebook should be:

• clean,
• concrete,
• easy to read on any device.

It doesn’t need to look like a fashion magazine. It needs to be:

• easy to get through,
• easy to implement,
• visually “put together” and trustworthy.

4️⃣ Step 4 – Build a simple $100K-ready funnel around it

• A clear sales page with a strong promise.
• Payments + automatic delivery.
• A few follow-up emails.
• Traffic (organic, social, paid).

That’s it.
No hundreds of products, no warehouse, no years of catalog building.

 

🗺️ Want a Ready-Made Map for This Model?

You don’t need another list of “50 side hustles to try this year”.

You need one clear path that actually leads somewhere – from zero to a scalable income stream.

The ebook “Zero to $100K with AI. Teo’s Method” is exactly that path. It gives you:

• my frameworks for choosing niches and offers,
• ready-to-use AI prompts for creating high-value ebooks,
• funnel templates that turn cold traffic into buyers,
• and the specific levers to pull if you want to push toward that $100K mark.

👉 Get the full $100K AI ebook blueprint

 

📉 Why “Low-Risk, High-Margin, Simple” Beats “Sexy But Fragile”

🧨 The hidden cost of chasing trendy models

The internet loves:

• new buzzwords,
• screenshots with huge revenue numbers,
• stories like “I made 100K in a week”.

What you rarely see:

• how much it cost to get there,
• how many people crashed trying the same thing,
• what was left when the hype wave ended.

🧱 Stability beats hype when you’re building income, not a story

If your goal is:

• stable income,
• the ability to plan ahead,
• and a path to scale without burning out,

then it’s worth choosing a model that is:

• low-risk,
• low-complexity,
• high-margin.

AI ebooks offer exactly that mix.

📈 The boring truth: small, repeatable wins compound to $100K

Most people overestimate:

• what they can do in a week,

and dramatically underestimate:

• what they can do in 6–12 months consistently growing one simple model.

A few ebooks, a few solid funnels, some traffic — and suddenly:

• $1K/month,
• then $3–5K,
• then $8–10K.

It doesn’t have to be brutally complicated.

 

📆 What to Do This Month If You Want to Be in the AI Winners’ Group

Instead of reading this and saying “cool, someday”, you can turn the next month into your starting point.

Week 1 – Choose your lane and commit

• Decide that AI-powered ebooks are your main model, not just “an option”.
• List your strengths, experiences, and topics people already ask you about.
• Use ChatGPT to surface a list of problems you can help solve.

Week 2 – Validate your first ebook idea and outline it with AI

• Pick one concrete problem and create a working title.
• Use AI to generate a detailed table of contents.
• Run it by a few people in your target audience or relevant communities.

Week 3 – Create, design, and price your first ebook

• Generate chapters with ChatGPT.
• Add your own stories, examples, and experience.
• Format a clean PDF and simple cover.
• Set a sensible price (e.g. $19–47).

Week 4 – Launch, promote, and collect your first data

• Build a simple sales page.
• Set up payment and automatic delivery.
• Show the product where your target audience hangs out.
• Get your first sales, feedback, and stats.

After one month you have:

• a real product,
• a real page,
• real data.

Not just another idea list.

 

🚀 Choosing the Model That Actually Gives You a Shot at $100K

The truth is, all three models can make money.

But if you look at:

• risk,
• control,
• margins,
• number of moving parts,

the picture is pretty clear:

• Dropshipping is loud, but heavy and stressful.
• Affiliate marketing is attractive, but fragile if it’s your only pillar.
• AI-powered ebooks are quiet, simple, and extremely profitable for a solo creator.

While most people are still searching for a “winning product” for their store or praying their affiliate program doesn’t shut down, a small group is calmly building AI ebook businesses with tiny overhead and big upside.

If you want to be in that second group, you don’t have to assemble the model from 20 random YouTube videos.

In “Zero to $100K with AI. Teo’s Method” I show you exactly:

• how I chose the niche and problem,
• how I used AI to create a 52-page PDF,
• how I built a simple funnel that led to $96,870 in 90 days,
• and how you can apply the same framework in your own niche.

👉 Grab your copy of “Zero to $100K with AI. Teo’s Method” and start building the model that can actually take you to $100K