If you’ve been running your business for years without AI, you’re not alone. But study finds the data behind that choice is harder to ignore than most operators think.
What’s happening: A survey of more than 4,000 digitally active workers in the US and India has found that the most experienced side-business operators in America are significantly less likely to use AI tools than those who are newer to the market, with meaningful differences in monthly earnings between adopters and non-adopters.
There is a common assumption in business: the longer you have been operating, the better placed you are to compete. Experience brings efficiency, client relationships, and hard-won knowledge of what works. But a recent survey suggests that when it comes to AI, experience may be working against some operators.
Hostinger, a web hosting company, surveyed 4,002 digitally active workers in the United States and India in January 2026. Among US side-business owners who had been operating for more than three years, just 46% reported using AI tools. Every other group, regardless of how long they had been in business, clustered between 63% and 67%. The drop is not gradual. It lands almost entirely on the most experienced operators.
The survey covered a broad range of business types, from freelancing and online selling to handyman services and content creation. It defined AI adoption as actively using AI tools to support the business, excluding those who said they planned to but had not yet started.
Critically, the income gap between average and typical earners in this market is already wide. The average monthly side-business income in the US sits at $885, while the median is just $200, a split the survey’s authors say maps closely onto who is and who is not using AI.
One sector breaks the pattern
The gap between experienced and newer operators holds across almost every business type. Among freelancers with more than three years of experience, AI adoption sits at 62%, compared to 76 to 79% for those newer to the field. Online sellers show a 13-point gap, real estate operators a 14-point gap, and handyman services a 12-point gap.
There is one exception. Among content creators, including YouTubers, bloggers, newsletter writers and social media producers, experienced operators adopt AI at 84%, the highest rate of any group in the survey. The authors suggest this is because generative AI visibly threatened the core of their work when tools like ChatGPT became publicly available in 2023. A writer who has been producing blog content for years watched AI learn to do the same job. That made the stakes concrete in a way that, say, a plumber or a tradesperson has not experienced in the same direct way.
When the threat is abstract, experience appears to slow adoption. When it becomes visible, the pattern reverses.
‘It doesn’t apply to me’
The survey asked non-adopters why they were not using AI. Among established operators who had been running their business for more than three years and were not using AI tools, the most common response, cited by 52%, was that their business simply does not benefit from AI. Among non-adopters who had started in the past year, that figure ranged from 28% to 31%.
Cost was not the issue. Just 1% of established non-adopters cited expense as a barrier. Lack of training accounted for 6%. The dominant reason was a belief that AI was not relevant to what they do.
The survey authors note that the income data tells a different story. AI adoption correlates with higher earnings at every level measured. Among side-business owners earning $1,000 or more per month, established operators who had been running their business for more than three years adopted AI at 60%, compared to 70 to 84% for newer cohorts. Among those earning $500 to $999 per month, the gap widened further, with established operators at 40% against 57 to 74% for newer entrants.
As the authors put it, the longer someone operates without AI, the more their workflows optimise around its absence, and the more reasonable the conclusion feels from the inside.
What the income data shows
The survey found that operators with more than three years of experience have the highest share of earners bringing in $2,000 or more per month, at 18.7%. But they also have the highest share stuck in the $100 to $499 range, at 32%. The cohort is splitting in two.
Their overall share of earners above $1,000 per month, at 37%, has been overtaken by operators who started just one to three years ago, who sit at 48%.
For comparison, in India, AI adoption across every tenure group runs between 87% and 92%, with no meaningful gap between experienced and newer operators. The survey’s authors suggest this may reflect the fact that fewer Indian entrepreneurs built their workflows in the pre-AI era, leaving less established process to move away from.
For Australian small business owners, the findings carry a quiet prompt. The “it doesn’t apply to me” view is more common among experienced operators than newer ones, and the income data suggests it is increasingly costly. The businesses most likely to be affected are not those run by people who have tried AI and rejected it. They are run by people who have not yet felt the need to try.
Full survey here.
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