Minted by AI 🪙
April 18, 2026 · Delivered twice a week
📬 This issue: The AI skill that pays 40% more per hour right now
Hey — big week in AI, and it's hitting people's wallets in a real way. Anthropic just dropped Claude Opus 4.7, the most powerful publicly available AI model right now, and it's already making waves for developers who bill by the hour.
Meanwhile, Upwork's new annual report confirmed what a lot of hustle-minded people have been quietly figuring out: AI-enabled freelancers are earning 40% more per hour than those who aren't using these tools — and demand for AI skills more than doubled in the last year.
You're getting the cliff notes right here so you don't have to dig through 47 tabs. Let's get into it.
📰 This Week's Top Stories
Anthropic Just Released the Most Powerful AI Anyone Can Actually Use
Claude Opus 4.7 landed on April 16 and immediately reclaimed the top spot for most capable publicly available AI. The big upgrades: it can now handle images at 3× the previous resolution, it's dramatically better at coding long, complex projects, and it includes a new /ultrareview command that simulates a senior engineer reviewing your code — catching logic flaws and design problems, not just typos.
For freelancers selling dev work, this is a genuine productivity multiplier. Clients reported a 13% lift in coding tasks and 3× more production issues resolved per session. Pricing stays the same as Opus 4.6 — $5/M input tokens, $25/M output tokens — with up to 90% savings via caching.
How you can use this: If you do any freelance coding, content, or document work — switch your workflow to Opus 4.7 today and time yourself on a task you normally charge $200 for. Seriously log it. Many people find they can now do 3–4 of those tasks in the same time. That's not a productivity boost — that's a business model shift.
Upwork Says AI Skills Demand Just Doubled — Here Are the Hottest Ones
Upwork's 2026 In-Demand Skills report dropped this week and the numbers are striking: skills explicitly tied to AI grew 109% year-over-year — more than 4× faster than other high-demand skills. The fastest-growing gigs are AI video generation and editing (+329%), AI integration work (+178%), and data annotation and labeling (+154%).
The kicker: AI-enabled freelancers on the platform are earning 40% more per hour than peers who aren't using AI tools. Tasks that used to take 6 hours now take 2.5 — but people are charging the same rates. Profit per hour has nearly tripled for early adopters.
How you can use this: Create or update an Upwork profile specifically calling out AI video editing or AI integration. Even if you've only done 2–3 projects, list the specific tools (Runway, Kling, Make.com) — that language is what clients are searching for right now, and there's way less competition than in traditional freelance categories.
OpenAI Updated Its Agents SDK — and Building Bots Just Got a Lot Easier
OpenAI pushed a significant update to its Agents SDK on April 15, adding safety guardrails, more reliable multi-step reasoning, and better tool-calling for enterprise tasks. In plain English: the toolkit for building custom AI agents that do real work autonomously just got a serious upgrade.
Businesses are paying $2,500–$50,000 for custom agent builds, plus $500–$5,000/month for ongoing management — and the AI agents market is projected to hit $10.9 billion in 2026 alone. The window to be an early service provider here is still open, but it's narrowing fast.
How you can use this: Pick one repetitive task a local business near you hates doing — lead follow-up emails, appointment reminders, invoice chasing — and pitch them a simple AI agent to handle it. Start with Make.com or the OpenAI Agents SDK. Charge $500 to build it and $200/month to maintain. That's recurring income from one afternoon of work.
AI Agents Are Now Running Corporate Payroll — and That's an Opportunity
ADP just rolled out a new AI Payroll Variance Agent to its global platform — a system that autonomously flags and explains discrepancies in payroll across 40+ countries, replacing hours of manual auditing. Meanwhile, Amazon announced 16,000 layoffs this week, explicitly citing its shift to "AI-driven automation and agentic workflows," targeting middle management and administrative roles.
These aren't distant warnings. They're this week's headlines. The roles being replaced are exactly the kind that AI agents handle well: repetitive, rules-based, high-volume. The winners will be the people building and deploying those agents — not just the big companies buying them.
How you can use this: If you have any HR, finance, or operations background, now is the time to pivot to "AI workflow consulting." You don't need to be a developer — you just need to understand the process well enough to spec it out for one. That's a $3,000–$10,000 consulting engagement waiting for someone who makes the first call.
🔧 Tool of the Week
Claude Opus 4.7
What it does: Anthropic's most powerful AI model — handles coding, research, writing, vision, and long multi-step tasks with minimal handholding.
How to make money with it: Opus 4.7's superpower is sustained effort on complex tasks. Use it to build client deliverables that would normally take 3× as long — code audits, business process documents, research reports, multi-section proposals. Clients pay for the output quality, not how long it took you. The new /ultrareview feature is immediately useful for anyone charging for code review or QA work — it flags design-level problems that junior tools miss.
Free or paid? Claude.ai offers free access to a capped version. Opus 4.7 at full power runs through the API at $5/M input tokens and $25/M output tokens — with 90% savings available via prompt caching. For most freelancers, the cost per task is cents, not dollars.
💡 Side Hustle Spotlight
AI Video Script Writing for YouTube Channels
Faceless YouTube channel owners are paying $100–$500 per script right now, and they're hungry for writers who can consistently deliver. Here's the move: use Claude Opus 4.7 or ChatGPT to draft full video scripts from a topic brief in 15–20 minutes. Then spend 20 minutes editing for voice and flow. You're delivering a polished, human-reviewed script in under an hour.
Use: Claude Opus 4.7 or ChatGPT (GPT-5.3 Instant)
Do: Write 10–15 minute educational or entertainment video scripts for niche channels (finance, tech, history, self-improvement)
Client type: Faceless YouTube operators (search "hire video script writer" on Upwork — 800+ open jobs right now)
Time per script: 45–60 minutes with AI assist
Realistic income: $100–$500 per script · $1,500–$4,000/month at 4–5 scripts/week
Set up an Upwork profile, post a sample script in a popular niche (finance does great), and apply to 10 jobs per day for the first week. This is one of the fastest AI-powered income paths to $1K/month because demand is enormous and most people aren't delivering fast enough.
⚡ Quick Hits
📹 AI video editing on Upwork grew 329% YoY — if you can use Runway, Kling, or CapCut AI, you're sitting on one of the hottest freelance skills in the market right now.
💰 ChatGPT hit $2 billion in monthly revenue with 910M weekly active users — the platform effect is real, and it means more clients who already trust AI and want help using it.
🤖 Anthropic is being valued at $800B, more than double its February valuation — capital is pouring into the AI ecosystem, which historically means more money flowing to builders and freelancers in that space.
📉 Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs citing AI — middle management and admin roles are the target. The people winning right now are the ones offering to build those AI systems for the companies doing the cutting.
That's it for this one — go try the Opus 4.7 upgrade and see what falls off your plate this week. Next issue, we're digging into a specific AI business model that's generating recurring income from 3–4 hours of setup. You'll want that one.
Stay sharp — the Minted by AI team
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