He Made $2,000 in One Week With AI... Then TikTok Froze $3,000
First came the win: $2,200 in profit in just one week. Then came the loss: $3,722 in earnings, frozen and inaccessible. This is the high-stakes reality of one creator’s experiment with AI avatars and TikTok Shop. In his video, “How I Used AI To Make $2000 PROFIT in 1 week”, Mikey Again documents the entire roller-coaster ride.
It’s a clear case study for anyone interested in AI, side hustles, or the volatility of building a business on someone else’s platform. He found a winning formula, but he also discovered the brutal catch.
Here’s a breakdown of how he did it, what went wrong, and the lesson every creator needs to learn.
The $2,200/Week AI Playbook
Mikey’s strategy wasn’t random; it was a clever combination of new technology and a specific market opportunity.
- The Opportunity: The TikTok Shop Affiliate program. This lets creators earn a commission (sometimes 20-30%) on products they promote in their videos.
- The Problem: As a young guy, Mikey felt he couldn’t effectively sell products to other demographics. As he says, “it’s a lot harder to sell to other demographics if you don’t look like them.”
- The Tool: He used Google’s Veo3 (which he calls “V3”) to create realistic AI avatars. This let him create a 70-year-old grandma to sell oregano supplements or a concerned middle-aged man to sell beetroot supplements. He could be anyone his audience would trust.
The “Secret Sauce” was the Script
His real breakthrough was in the scriptwriting. He used ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas, but he followed a specific, high-converting formula:
- A Relatable Hook: Start with a hook that “digs deep” into the target audience’s insecurities and problems.
- Agitate the Problem: Keep digging into that pain point so they “feel it deep in their bones.”
- Provide the Solution: Introduce the product as the one and only solution.
- A Strong Offer: Sell it hard with a discount or a clear call to action.
He gives a great example of a “trash hook” versus a “good hook” for a men’s health supplement:
- Trash Hook: “Beetroot is a natural way to support your health and energy levels.” (Boring, no one cares.)
- Good Hook: “I see you’ve stopped playing with your kids, but it’s not because you’re old. It’s because your blood can’t keep up.” (Ouch. That’s specific, relatable, and hits an insecurity.)
This formula worked. One of his AI-generated videos (“You ever brush your tongue and it’s still white… that’s not hygiene. That’s yeast.”) went viral, hitting 1.4 million views and generating a flood of sales. Such luck!
The “Traumatizing” Downside
This is where the story turns. While the sales were climbing, Mikey lived in constant fear of one thing: “Violations.”
TikTok’s platform is notoriously strict and automated. If your video accidentally says or does the wrong thing, you get “violation points” that can lead to an instant, irreversible ban.
This is especially terrifying because to even start with TikTok Shop, you need 5,000 followers. Mikey notes that many creators just buy an account for around $400 to get started. Imagine spending $400 on an account, finally getting it to make money, and then losing it all overnight.
He describes the feeling as “PTSD,” saying he was “traumatized” to even check his phone, knowing that everything could be gone in an instant.
And then it was.
He got hit with “unoriginal content” violations—even though he made the videos himself with AI—and his accounts were banned.
The worst part? He was left with $3,722 in his US account that is completely frozen. He can’t access it. It’s just… gone.
The “1% Method”: A Workaround for the Risk
This story isn’t all gloom. Mikey’s expensive lesson revealed a crucial workaround for anyone else attempting this: The “1% Method”.
It’s a clever way to de-risk the entire operation:
- Instead of having TikTok pay you the full 20% commission, you arrange with the brand to set your official, in-app commission to the lowest possible rate (e.g., 1%).
- The brand then pays you the rest of your real commission (the other 19%) directly through PayPal, bank transfer, or another method outside of the TikTok app.
This way, you never have a large sum of money sitting in your TikTok account “wallet.” If you get banned, you only lose the 1% that was pending, not your entire month’s earnings.
Mikey is now scaling this new, safer method with 20 new accounts. His story is the perfect example of the new AI-powered gold rush: the potential is massive, but the platform you’re building on can take it all away without warning.
Watch the Full Video
You can see the whole story for yourself right here:
