Welcome back to this week’s Side Income Roundup, Monday, July 6.
This week is about a new kind of shopper. AI assistants are starting to find products, compare them, and check out for a buyer, and the stores set up for it are quietly getting picked first.
📢 Why scattering AI across ten tools does nothing, and the simple loop that actually compounds
🛠 Shopify switches on AI shopping by default, plus a tool that checks if agents can actually buy from you
⚡ Two quick Instagram tweaks that put your best products where people look first
📝 How a brand-new YouTube channel earns its first $100 before it hits 100 subscribers
🤖 The AI “co-founder” thousands of solo owners are leaning on for their next move
Let’s get into it.
THIS WEEK’S BIG IDEA
📢 The AI flywheel that beats owning ten different tools
Most people bolt AI onto their business in bits. A chatbot here, a caption tool there, none of it connected, and results stay flat. AI works far harder when you wire it into one loop, so what you learn from customers feeds straight back into what you sell.
The beginner version starts this week. Point AI at your reviews and support replies, find the one objection killing sales, fix the page that causes it, and that single fix teaches you the next one.
Our Take: Don’t chase ten AI tools this week. Pick one product, feed your reviews and support replies into an AI, find the objection that quietly kills sales, and rewrite that page to answer it.
TOOLS OF THE WEEK
🛠 Shopify Summer ‘26 “Everywhere Edition”
Shopify now turns on agentic commerce by default, so AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini can read your catalog and build a cart, with a new dashboard showing how people and AI find you.
🛠 Selltonomy AI Buyability Platform
It audits your store for the silent breakages in product data and checkout that stop an AI agent from finishing a purchase, the kind your analytics never flag.
Our Take: AI shoppers are buying right now, so switch on Shopify’s Summer ‘26 agentic features this week, then run your store through Selltonomy to confirm an agent can actually finish a checkout, not just browse.
TODAY’S QUICK WINS
⚡ Instagram adds a caption to every carousel slide
A toggle now lets each slide carry its own text that changes as someone swipes, so every product image gets its own hook instead of one caption doing all the work.
⚡ Instagram lets you reorder your profile grid
Tap, hold, and drag posts to rearrange your grid without deleting or reposting, so your best sellers no longer sit wherever the calendar dropped them.
Our Take: Drag your best-selling posts to the top of your grid, and use the new per-slide captions on your next carousel so each image sells on its own.
FROM OMC
📝 How to Build a YouTube Channel That Earns Its First $100 Before You Hit 100 Subscribers
Most people assume YouTube pays through ad revenue, so they wait months to qualify and quit before the money shows. This post shows how a brand-new channel earns its first $100 long before it’s “big,” and why ads are the slowest money on the platform.
Our Take: If you’ve been putting off a channel until you hit some subscriber count, that number is the wrong finish line. The first money comes from a decision you make before you ever film.
AI SPOTLIGHT
🤖 The AI “co-founder” solo owners are flocking to
ZenBusiness just opened up Velo, an AI tool that tells a solo owner the single next step for their business and maps out an idea, its startup costs, and progress. Nearly three-quarters of its customers run solo and they’re adopting it fast, which says a lot about what one-person businesses want from AI.
Our Take: You don’t need this exact tool, you need the habit behind it. Once a week, hand an AI your numbers and your to-do list and ask for the single next move, then go do that one thing.
UNTIL NEXT WEEK…
Here’s your move this week:
✅ Pick one product and let AI find the objection that’s costing you sales
✅ Switch on Shopify’s agentic features, then check your store with Selltonomy
✅ Reorder your Instagram grid so your best sellers sit up top
✅ Add per-slide captions to your next Instagram carousel
The sellers who pull ahead this summer aren’t the ones with the most AI tools. They’re the ones making sure every buyer, human or AI, can find them and check out.
Talk soon,
Aidan
P.S. This Wednesday I’m showing you how a brand-new YouTube channel can earn its first $100 before it ever crosses 100 subscribers, and why ad money is the last place that cash comes from. Keep an eye on your inbox.
