I Wrote One Prompt, Made $0.37, and Now I’m Calling Myself a Prompt Engineer on LinkedIn

Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash

Look, every heroic origin story starts somewhere — Spiderman got bit by a radioactive spider, Batman’s parents forgot the safest route home, and I … typed eleven words into ChatGPT. Eleven! The digital equivalent of dropping a single Pop-Tart crumb into the Grand Canyon — and yet it still earned me thirty-seven glorious cents of ad-revenue magic. Naturally, I’ve updated my LinkedIn headline to “Prompt Engineer | AI Whisperer | Low-Key Visionary.” Elon, call me.

It all began when Medium recommended an article titled “Quit Your Job After One AI Prompt.” Challenge accepted. I spent three grueling minutes finessing a masterpiece: “Write a blog post about why pigeons could be undercover government drones — make it funny.” The model belched out 800 delirious words, I slapped on a click-baity headline (“Top-Secret Coops Exposed!”), and hit publish. Within an hour, two strangers and my mom’s curious Kindle fire clicked on it. Cha-ching: $0.37.

I felt the power course through my veins — or maybe that was the third iced coffee. Either way, I’d tasted passive income. Who needs a 401(k) when you’ve got loose change rolling in like that? I fired up Canva, whipped together a blue-and-white “AI Prompt Engineer” badge, and plastered it across every social channel I own. (Yes, including…