Mo Zohourian Turns $15-an-Hour AI Gig Into $100-an-Hour Career
Updated
Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 30
Mo Zohourian Turns $15-an-Hour AI Gig Into $100-an-Hour Career
3 articles · Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 30
Summary
$100 an hour is what Mo Zohourian says he now earns on AI evaluation projects after starting at $15 an hour when a 10-month job search in Canada failed to land him a traditional role.
15 years in sales became the turning point: after passing platform assessments and building a track record on general tasks, he moved into higher-paying sales-specialist AI projects and says the rate has held for 10 months.
20 to 40 hours a week of contract work now funds two related ventures—an AI consulting firm for small businesses and Annotation Academy, a training platform that landed its first paying client on launch day in June.
Project work can still pause for weeks and rates vary, but Zohourian says demand for domain experts has risen as AI training tasks have grown more complex with newer agentic models.