I couldn't land a job, so I started AI training for $15 an hour. Now I make $100 an hour and built a career around AI.

Mo Zohourian This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Mo Zohourian, who works as a contractor for AI training companies, specializing in sales management. His work and project rates have been confirmed by Business Insider. Zohourian also consults on AI for small businesses and founded Annotation Academy, an educational platform for AI training. This story has been edited for length and clarity.I moved to Canada from Iran in 2023 and started searching for jobs. I had 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship and sales management, but after back-to-back interviews, I was not getting hired.I had been applying for about 10 months when I saw an ad on LinkedIn offering work for $15 per hour to train AI, no experience needed. Because I didn't have a job, I said, "Okay, I'll give it a shot," but I was skeptical. I didn't even tell my wife that I started doing it until I received the first payment.A few years later, I've built a career around AI. I now earn $100 per hour on AI evaluation as a specialist in sales management. I also consult for small businesses on how to use AI and have launched a platform to teach others how to become AI trainers.It's been crazy. I never thought that AI would be my profession when I started doing it.My sales experience helped me move on to higher-paying AI training projectsInitially, the work was inconsistent, and I was still looking for full-time jobs.About three months in, I got a project for $30 an hour. The company I was doing work for had assessments you could take, and by passing them, you would be eligible to work on more important projects. I took and passed assessments for English literature, reasoning, and mathematics. I started making $35 an hour.I started doing work for multiple companies. Sometimes I'd make $45 an hour on a project, other times $70. There isn't a baseline. Sometimes a project pays less than the one you did before it. As a freelancer, you don't have the same leverage. It is what it is. You can take it or leave it.Everything changed when the expert jobs started to show. The biggest jump in pay and consistent work was when I started getting assigned sales projects, because that was my expertise. Initially, the expert projects were limited to STEM fields such as physics, chemistry, and coding. As soon as they started to look for sales experts, I already had a good track record of high-quality tasks on all the platforms, so I was able to get on projects. If I hadn't had a history on these platforms, I don't think I would've gotten the higher-paying sales projects.Now I work as a sales manager expert on high-stakes projects. I've been consistently getting on projects for $100 an hour for the past 10 months.These projects are so different from when I started AI evaluation, when everything was so easy — just writing a prompt, writing two responses, and writing a simple justification. Now, with agentic AI and the more powerful models, the tasks are completely different and more complex.I work a lot, but AI training gave me flexibility and the freedom to start my own businessI stopped applying to full-time jobs about three months after I started AI evaluation, but I still thought AI training was a transition job. It wasn't until about a year of AI training that I was sure it was what I wanted to do.I typically spend 20 to 40 hours a week on AI training. There may be a one- to two-week pause, or even a monthlong pause, in a project. I always have the option to start another project. But because I have my own business, I use those windows to be more focused on what I am doing personally.Currently, my priority is my business. I started a firm as an AI consultant helping small businesses use AI to be more efficient. I got my first client, a meal prep company, through someone I met at a party last year. I also launched Annotation Academy, an online platform where I teach people how to do AI evaluation. I got my first paying client for that on launch day in June.I work a lot, from early in the morning to late at night. But because I can set my own schedule, I still have the luxury of spending time with my son — dropping him off, picking him up, taking him to classes. I can live a life that I love in a way that I could not if I had a full-time job.My businesses are profitable, but I don't pay myself a salary from them. Because of my AI evaluation job, I can reinvest that money into the company for future expansion and live on my income from AI evaluation.When I started AI training, I had some savings and was not under great financial pressure. That helped me stay in AI evaluation when the work was inconsistent. The tasks were also much simpler then, so I was able to grow in the work as the tasks became more difficult. But there is a huge demand right now for people who can deliver and who have domain expertise.This job changed my life in a good way. After working in sales for 15 years, I was attached to it. You think you can develop faster in an industry that you built a foundation on. But for me, I could never find the quick advancement that I found in AI training. Read next Kelsey is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers business and tech news as well as stories about travel, luxury, and consulting.Her feature story "Disaster at 18,200 feet" received awards from the New York Press Club and the North American Travel Journalists Association, as well as honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers. It was also included on Longreads' and Pocket's best of 2022 lists. She has also received an American Journalism Online Award for her coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Wyoming.She's appeared on CBS, NPR, NBC, and other outlets to discuss her work. 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