[ke88y]

You could try to apply for grants. 20K+ chats sounds like a large number -- you must live in a 1M+ person metro area, right? It would probably be fairly easy to get a four figure grant from one agency or another. You could frame it as "localization of generative ai to the regional culture of X", or as a tourism thing, etc.

You could also sell advertising the old-fashioned way -- ask local businesses or perhaps a local university if they'd like the model to mention them in certain prompts.

But your best bet is probably to treat this as a loss leader and put up a small banner offering "In-Person Generative AI Consulting" in your metro area.

[stanleydrew]

Grants will take a long time to lock down I suspect. Maybe fine if you can float the cost for a few months and reimburse yourself out of grant funds later, but there's a lot of uncertainty.

$50/day is pretty small relatively speaking, so just finding a local corporate sponsor and running an ad for them would probably work.

[411111111111111]

why pick up the phone if you could just put down a placeholder banner saying something like "do you want your company name here? write [an-email-address-thats-not-your-personal-mail]".

If the project is really becoming a local hit then you're bound to get contacted.

[hutzlibu]

This is likely the most easy way.

Alternativly or additionally you can ask for donations on that banner. And a link where OP explains his situation, no profit, just costs, but like to keep the thing running.