Fooocus

Business Idea 2: Create a virtual influencer with Fooocus

Here’s the second AI money-making idea: Lately, AI-generated influencers have been trending. So I decided to write a short guide on how to do it. Let’s dive in!

Meet Aitana,

A virtual Instagram influencer earning more than $10,000 per month.

She has more than 233k Instagram followers and is not a real person!

Her creators earn money by offering her exclusive content which costs $7.5 per month.

She’s not the only one successful virtual influencer. There are many of them. Here are some examples:

• • Miquela – 2.7m followers, partnered with BMW and make $10,000 per advertisement.

• • Imma – 395k followers

• • Qai Qai – 341k followers

• • Shudu – 241k followers

• • Kyra – 236k

And many more!

How can you create your own AI Influencer

The good news is that we can create a virtual influencer using completely free tools available for download to your computer.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Think of a character and a personality

To be successful, you need to conceptualize the character and appearance of your influencer. You need to answer the following questions:

• • Name?

• • Looks?

• • Personality, like gamer or traveler?

• • Uniqueness? Could be a historical figure?

2. Download and Install Fooocus

Download Fooocus on you computer and install it. Here’s a YouTube guide on how to do it.

The download size of the app is 1.8GB and when you install it will require another 8GB of disk space. Make sure you have enough disk space to install it.

Start the program by using the ‘run_realistic’ file to ensure maximum realism in your images.

3. Create the face

Open the app and enter a prompt to create your unique virtual influencer. I used the following:

“beautiful 21 year old lady, big smile, blue eyes, dark makeup, hyperdetailed photography, soft light, head and shoulders portrait, cover”

Here’s the result:

Experiment and generate various faces until you achieve the desired result. Fooocus is completely free, so you can use it as often as you like.

This will be our base image, which we will then use to generate all the other images.

4. Swap the face

When we have our base face ready, it’s time to place it in different poses and backgrounds.

You can do this in two ways:

4.1 Using a prompt

Go to Fooocus and:

1. 1. Select the “input image” checkbox

1. 1. Select the “advanced” checkbox

1. 1. Select the “faceswap” option

1. 1. Drag the face that you generated to the first image box

1. 1. Write a prompt of how you would like to see your AI influencer. I wrote “Working out in a gym”

4.2 Using an existing image

Find the image you would like to use for face swapping on Instagram, a stock photo site, or from your existing images. You need to enable the ‘Input Image’ and ‘Advanced Options’ as in the previous instructions.

Here, you will use two images:

1. 1. The image with the face should have the ‘FaceSwap’ option enabled.

1. 1. The second image, which will have the desired pose, should have the ‘PyraCanny’ option enabled. This means it will mimic the pose of this image and use the face from the first one to create a combination of the two.

1. 1. The text prompt is also active and can assist in refining some details.

1. 1. Press the Generate button.

5. Improve the image

The generated images are not always perfect. Sometimes the hands or the eyes look weird. In this case, it generated the girl with brown eyes instead of blue. We can fix that using the Fooocus Inpaint option.

1. 1. Select the ‘Inpaint or Outpaint’ tab and drag the image into the image field.

1. 1. Upload the image you would like to fix.

1. 1. Choose ‘Modify Content’ from the dropdown menu.

1. 1. Mark the area you wish to fix. In our case, it’s the eyes.

1. 1. Describe the fix. For us, it’s ‘Change the eye color to blue’.

1. 1. Press the Generate button.

Sometimes an image may require multiple fixes.

That’s it.

Now, your image should be ready to be published on Instagram or any other social media platform.

How to profit?

First, you need to build a substantial following to be able to earn money from it. Consistently post interesting and attractive content to attract as many followers as possible. Use your creativity.

Here are the main ways to profit from your Virtual Influencer:

1. 1. Sell paid advertisements.

1. 1. Offer paid and exclusive content.

1. 1. Create sponsored content.

You’ll need at least 10,000 followers to start earning from it. It will require reaching out to relevant brands and offering them your influencer advertisements.

Try to provide a unique experience with your Virtual Influencer because there is considerable competition, but it is still relatively early in the game.

P.S. This is a basic guide. To use Fooocus effectively, you’ll need practice, as images may not always meet your expectations initially.

Useful links for using Fooocus

• • Detailed Fooocus guide.

• • Another Fooocus how to guide.

• • Fooocus styles that you can potentially use

That’s it.

Taken from the blog section.

Share this guide if you find it useful.