💰 Results: -€21
⏱ Time invested: Around 1–2 hours
🔥 Worth it? No
🛠 Tools used: Upwork, Akool
I managed to lose money on an Upwork job before even doing the job.
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One email per experiment. Full numbers, no fluff.
Not a huge amount.
But still.
This was one of those small side hustle experiments that sounded clever in my head for about five minutes, and then very quickly turned into a reminder that not every opportunity deserves a workaround.
The job itself looked simple at first.
Someone on Upwork offered me $85 to create a short UGC-style selfie video for a game app.
Normally, that sounds like easy money. Record a quick video, send it, get paid.
But there was one problem.
The video concept felt scammy.
The Job Offer
The job was for a mobile game app.
They wanted a short selfie-style video. The kind of ad where someone looks into the camera, acts excited, and says something like:
“I just made thousands playing this game!”
You probably know the type.
Those ads where a person supposedly makes $5,000 in a few minutes by tapping around in some cartoon-looking mobile game.
I did not feel comfortable putting my real face into that kind of video.
Even if it was just acting, it still felt like something I did not want attached to me.
But the payment was $85.
And that made me hesitate.
That was probably the first mistake.
My Brilliant Plan
Instead of simply rejecting the job, I tried to be clever.
My idea was:
I could record the video normally, then use an AI face swap tool to replace my face before sending it.
In theory, it sounded perfect.
I would still deliver the video.
The client would get the content.
My real face would not be used.
Everyone wins.
At least that is how it sounded in my head.
So I started looking for AI face swap platforms and eventually tried Akool.
Of course, to use the tool properly, I had to pay.
I did not love that part, but I thought:
If the job pays $85, maybe paying around €21 for the tool is still worth it.
Classic side hustle math.
Sometimes it works.
This time it did not.
The Result Was Terrible
After paying and uploading the video, I tested the face swap.
The result was bad.
Very bad.
The face looked obviously fake. The movement did not feel natural. The quality dropped. It had that weird AI look where you can immediately tell something is off.
It did not look like a real UGC video.
It looked like someone tried to hide their face with AI and failed.
Which is exactly what happened.
At that point, I had two choices:
send the bad video anyway, or drop the job.
I dropped it.
There was no point sending low-quality content, especially for a job that already felt uncomfortable from the beginning.
Why I Did Not Keep Testing Other AI Tools
Of course, I could have tried other AI face swap tools.
Maybe another platform would have given a better result. Maybe with different settings, better lighting, or more testing, the video could have looked more realistic.
But after already spending €21, I was not very motivated to keep going.
The main reason was simple:
I did not like the UGC video idea in the first place.
The job already felt uncomfortable before I spent any money. The AI tool was just my attempt to make it feel acceptable.
And that is not a great starting point.
So once the first result failed, I did not want to keep paying for more tools just to rescue a job I was not excited about anyway.
At that point, it felt smarter to stop the loss and move on.
Trying to Get a Refund
Since the result was unusable, I contacted Akool support and asked for a refund.
I sent them the poor-quality output and explained that the result was not good enough for what I needed.
The answer was basically:
No refund.
So that was it.
I paid for the tool, did not complete the job, and ended up with a loss.
Final result:
-€21
Not the end of the world.
But annoying.
What I Learned
The main lesson is simple:
If a job feels questionable at the start, AI tools will not magically make it a good job.
Actually, they can make it worse.
In this case, I was trying to solve the wrong problem.
The real problem was not my face.
The real problem was that I did not feel comfortable with the job.
If I did not want my real face connected to the video, that was already a sign that I should probably skip it.
The $85 payment made it tempting, but the job did not fit what I wanted to do.
AI Tools Are Not Always a Shortcut
I still think AI tools can be useful.
I use AI in other experiments, and sometimes it saves a lot of time.
But this reminded me that AI is not magic.
Some tools look better in demos than in real use.
Some results are not good enough for client work.
Some subscriptions are not worth paying for just to test one idea.
And sometimes, by the time you realize that, you have already paid.
That is exactly what happened here.
Was This Upwork Job Worth It?
No.
I did not complete the job.
I spent €21 on a tool.
The result was unusable.
I wasted time trying to make an uncomfortable offer work.
So my rating is:
SKIP
The mistake was not only losing €21.
The bigger mistake was almost getting involved in a job I already did not trust.
That is the real takeaway.
My Current Verdict
This was a small loss, but a useful lesson.
Upwork still has opportunities, and I am still testing it. But I need to be more careful about the jobs I accept or even consider.
Not every paid opportunity is a good opportunity.
Especially if the job requires me to advertise something I would not want to be associated with.
For now, I will keep using Upwork, but I will avoid jobs that feel scammy, misleading, or uncomfortable from the beginning.
Because sometimes the best side hustle move is not finding a clever workaround.
Sometimes it is just saying no.
Not financial advice. This is just my personal side hustle experiment and real experience testing an Upwork job and AI face swap tool.
