TL;DR: A Redditor built two prompts that force ChatGPT past the usual dropshipping-and-Etsy answers. Both are reproduced below, ready to copy and run today.
Every time someone asks an AI model for “underrated income ideas,” it hands back the same tired shortlist. Etsy shops, dropshipping, faceless YouTube channels, all three picked to death years ago.
u/Proof_Art6365 got sick of that loop and spent time reworking the question instead of the answer, which is the more interesting move here. The fix wasn’t a smarter question. It was a stricter process. Both prompts below force the model to generate a wide pool of ideas first, then actively kill anything that’s already saturated. That single change is doing most of the work.
Prompt One: Kill The Obvious Ideas First
This one assigns the model a role, sets hard filters, then makes it self-audit before handing over an answer. Here it is exactly as posted:
You are a market research analyst who finds overlooked income niches by studying supply-and-demand gaps, not trends.
Give me ideas that meet ALL of these:
- real demand (recurring problem, not a fad)
- not already saturated with creators/gurus talking about it
- uses a skill most people don’t realize they already have
- can be tested cheaply within 7 days
Do this in order:
- list 15 raw ideas
- for each, ask “would this show up in a passive income YouTube video?” if yes, cut it
- rank what’s left by demand strength minus how visible/competitive it already is
- give me the top 5 with: the gap it exploits, who already has the skill without realizing it, and the first paid transaction to aim for in week one
No dropshipping, print on demand, blogging, faceless youtube, or reselling courses. If your draft has any of those, redo it before answering.
Three things make this work. The role assignment (“market research analyst”) pulls the model away from generic advice mode. The staged steps force it to overproduce first (15 raw ideas) before cutting. That beats asking for “5 good ideas” straight up, since the model can’t shortcut to lazy defaults. And the explicit ban list at the end acts as a redo trigger, catching the exact ideas everyone’s already sick of hearing.
Prompt Two: Start From Complaints, Not Ideas
The second prompt flips the direction entirely. Instead of brainstorming ideas and checking if they’re viable, it starts from proof that money is already changing hands.
Act as someone who finds income ideas by reverse engineering complaints, not brainstorming ideas directly.
- list 10 recurring complaints from niche online communities (forums, subreddits, reviews) where people pay for a workaround or hire someone informally to fix it
- for each, name who’s already getting paid informally for this (a friend, freelancer, local shop), proof money already moves here
- score each 1-10 on “could one person serve this without building a company”
- top 3 as a table, complaint / who gets paid informally now / minimum viable offer / realistic first price
Rule: every complaint has to come from a community you can actually name (like “landlords in small claims subreddits”), not a vague group like “busy professionals.” if you can’t name it, drop it.
The key move is the naming rule at the end. It bans vague audiences like “busy professionals” and demands something you could actually go find and post in. That constraint alone filters out most of the fluffy output you’d normally get, because the model can’t hide behind a made-up demographic.
A couple of tweaks worth trying. In Prompt Two, swap “recurring complaints” for “recurring complaints from the last 90 days” for fresher gaps instead of old ones. In Prompt One, add a fifth filter for ideas that don’t need an audience or following to start. That’s the trap most “creator economy” suggestions fall into anyway. 🎯
Use Cases
- 💡 Validating a side hustle idea before you sink a weekend into it
- Scanning a niche subreddit for paid-workaround signals before launching a service
- 🔍 Building a shortlist of “boring but proven” income tests for a slow month
- Checking whether an idea you already have is secretly one of the saturated ones
One commenter pushed back, arguing that if ChatGPT can generate an idea, people are probably already talking about it. Fair point, but it misses the filtering step. The whole design of both prompts is built to strip out exactly those ideas, not present them as fresh.
Prompt of the Day
If you only run one of these today, make it Prompt Two. The obvious-idea filter is useful, but the “name the exact community” rule is the part doing real work. Point it at a subreddit you already lurk in and see what it finds.
Neither prompt is magic, and the original poster said as much. What they do is take a lazy question and turn it into a process with actual rejection criteria built in. That’s the whole trick, and it’s copy-and-pasteable right now. Go run both prompts against a niche you already know something about and see what survives the cut. Then check the original Reddit thread, the comments have people testing variations and reporting back on what worked.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: If an AI can generate these ideas, aren’t they already being talked about?
Good catch. The filtering is what matters. Most people ask ChatGPT “give me income ideas” and get the same tired stuff (Etsy, dropshipping, YouTube). These prompts force the model to actively eliminate what’s already everywhere by checking if it would show up in a typical passive income YouTube video. The generation step is easy, the filtering is where it counts.
Q: Should I use Prompt 1 or Prompt 2 first?
Depends on how you naturally think. Prompt 1 starts from skills and finds gaps. Prompt 2 starts from actual complaints people are already paying to solve. Run both if you can, Prompt 1 gives breadth, Prompt 2 gives you real demand signals.
Q: Can you actually make money in week one like Prompt 1 suggests?
Not full income, it’s about one paid transaction. Could be a small freelance gig, a consulting call, or your first customer. It’s proof the demand is real before you invest serious time. Think validation, not revenue.
Q: Does this actually work better than just asking for income ideas normally?
Users report the structured filtering beats generic brainstorming. By forcing the model to think about supply/demand gaps and saturation, you surface ideas others overlook. Real test: can you execute on something that’s actually not already flooded?
found 2 prompts that actually dig up income ideas nobody’s talking about (not another “passive income” list, i promise)
by u/Proof_Art6365 in ChatGPTPromptGenius