The Easiest Way To Install and Use OpenClaw For Beginners (Clawdbot)

So, there's this new AI assistant called OpenClaw that's been absolutely blowing up online. It's a personal AI assistant that runs on your infrastructure. You can talk to it through Telegram, Slack, or Discord, and it can basically automate your entire life. The problem is most people think it is very difficult to set up and that you need to spend hundreds of dollars on hardware, but you don't. Today, I'm going to show you how you can set this up in about 10 minutes for a fraction of the cost. Now, my first recommendation is you shouldn't set this up on your own computer. You want this in an isolated environment. Now, to do that, you could buy a new computer that you leave running 24/7, something like a Mac Mini, but that obviously gets very expensive. So, a much more affordable way to do this is to host it on a VPS. The one we're going to use today is HostingerVPS. And what I like about this is that they have actually made it very easy to set up OpenClaw. I'll have a link for this page in the description down below. That makes it very easy to get started. Their VPS is going to give you full route access, dedicated CPU and RAM, and it starts at just about seven bucks a month, which is roughly like a hundred times cheaper than buying a dedicated hardware. Now, full disclaimer, Hostinger is the sponsor of today's video, but I'm actually the one that reached out to them about this because I saw this as the best and easiest way for the average person to get set up with OpenClaw. They did agree to sponsor this video. So, I did want to thank them for that. And if you want to follow along with me as I show you how to do this, make sure to click the link in the description down below. Once you're on this page, over here on the right is where you can pick your VPS plan to deploy OpenClaw. Now, there are a few different choices here. If you switch between them, you can see what you get with each of them. Personally, I recommend you go with KVM2. That's going to get you the best price toerformance ratio in my opinion. Everything that it comes with, it's going to be more than enough resources to run multiple bots and automations. And if you ever need more power down the line, you can easily upgrade. Now, if you don't know what all this stuff means, it basically just means that your AI assistant is going to be able to run fast and you'll have plenty of room to grow. So, I'll select KVM2 and click on deploy. Now, on this pricing page, make sure under where it says period, you select how long you want to sign up for. 1 month, 12 months, or 24 months. Obviously, if you go for a longer period, like 24 months, it's going to cost you less per month. With all of them though, you're going to get an autodeploy open claw. And there's a couple other choices here as well. And down here, it shows your server location. This is automatically selected for you based on where you are. Over here on the right is the order summary. Go ahead and click on have a coupon code. Enter in Paul J for a discount. This discount may vary depending on when you're watching this, but it should work. So go ahead and enter in Paul J. Click apply and click on continue. And then you'll obviously want to enter in all your information and your payment information and actually complete the purchase. After you complete the purchase, Hostinger is going to automatically install OpenClaw for you. You don't have to configure anything manually. No command lines, no Docker setup. It just does it for you. And like I said, this is the easiest way I have found to set up OpenClaw. It's the reason that I recommend it. However, you will have to enter in some details. So, here on this page, the first thing you're going to see is your OpenClaw gateway token. Everything on this page is going to be super important that you keep very secure. and that starts with this one. So, you want to go ahead and copy this down and save it somewhere safe. Don't just save it on a blank document on your computer. You want to save it like in a password manager, for instance. So, I'm going to go ahead and copy down mine and save it somewhere. Next, you'll need to put in an API key for one of the AI companies. This allows Hostinger or your OpenClaw to talk with the AI to actually be able to help you. Now, you have four choices right here. You actually don't have to put one in right now, but I would recommend it. But the good news is that you're not locked in. If you choose one now, you can always change it later. You can have them all set up and like switch between them. But for right now, to keep it simple, I'm just going to start and set one up with Open AI, which is like chat GBT. So to do that, there's a link for it right here. I'm just going to go ahead and copy that down and open that up in a new tab. There we go. And this is linked to your Chat GPT account. So, if you already have one, just go ahead and click on the top right here where it says log in. If you don't have one, you'll have to sign up for an account. But you probably have a ChatGBT account. So, go ahead and click on login and sign into it with the same credentials you use for ChatGBT. All right. Once you're logged in, you can go ahead and create an API key. Now, if you're not really familiar with API, don't feel intimidated by this. It is very easy. You just copy and paste one code. That's about as technical as this gets. So over here on the left, click on where it says API keys and then click on create new secret key. Now I'll name this one open claw and I'll click create secret

key. Now right here, this will be your API key. You want to go ahead and copy this. Again, keep this very safe. If someone gets access to this, they can use your AI credits inside of Open AI, which could run up a large bill for you. So you don't want that to happen. So don't show this to anyone. I'm just going to go ahead and click on copy and then I'll click on done. Then returning back to Hostinger, I'm just going to go ahead and paste it into the open AI key box right there. And then finally, you have to enter a WhatsApp number. So this is one of the cool things about OpenClaw is that you can communicate with it through regular chats like WhatsApp or Telegram. So I'm going to set up WhatsApp right now. You can skip this, but I'm going to set it up now. And then you can always add other ones in the future like Telegram. So enter in my number and then I'll click on deploy. Now if you get this popup, I'm just going to go ahead and skip this. You don't need this. And now you see your project is being deployed. This is going to take a couple of minutes. So while that's happening, I'm going to return back to Open AI because you have to set up billing. To do that, click down here on the bottom left where it says go to billing, then add a payment or add payment details and enter in your credit card info. That way you can actually pay for your API credits. Now, on the next page, you can enter in how much you want for your initial purchase. I'm going to put in here $25 to start out just to be able to get everything set up. But this is really important. Would you like to set up automatic recharge? This is a really good way if you're nervous at first about spending too much money on API credits and just kind of blowing through them with OpenClaw. If you go ahead and turn this off, then it's kind of like a safety for you. If you run out of credits, you're going to get a notification that you've run out, and you can always come back in here and top them off. But this is kind of like just like that safety net for you. I'm pretty familiar with how this works, so I feel comfortable leaving this on. So, I'll say that when my credits go below $5, I want to bring it back up to $25. But I want to limit the number of times that happens every month. So, I don't want to spend more than, let's say, $50 every month. And then I'll click on continue. Returning back to Hostinger, I can see it is now complete. You'll know it's complete when you see this message right here. Although, it might be collapsed. If you click on this, this expands it. Now, go ahead and click right here. That will open it up. And now you need to paste in your open claw gateway token. This is the thing I told you to save and keep very safe. So, wherever you save that, just go ahead and copy it. Paste it in here and click on login. So now this is OpenClaw. We're in here. This is it. You can chat with it. And the cool thing is a lot of the rest of the setup is just done by chatting with your OpenClaw. So I'm going to come here to the messages and just say hi. Click on send. And here it's going to ask you a lot of questions. So this is what OpenClaw is. This is you're starting to use it and it's starting to ask you questions so it can become familiar with who you are to better help you. So I'm going to go ahead and answer these. What should I call you? Let's call you call me Paul. Uh, what do I want to call my open claw? I'll call him Frank. As for the vibe, I'm going to go with communal. And what time zone am I in? I'm in Mountain Standard Time. And that's all the questions it has so far. And then literally, it's just going to walk you through everything it needs to do to get set up. So, just go ahead and talk with it, answer all of its questions, and you're going to be able to get your OpenClaw set up. Now, once you get the basics set up, you can continue to chat with it inside this interface, but that's not ideal because, like I said, you can set up WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, tons of different ways you can chat with it. The way you do that is over here on the left, click on channels. Here you'll see sections for WhatsApp, Telegram, all those ones I mentioned. I'm going to set up WhatsApp. So, to do that, I open up WhatsApp on my phone. Click on settings on the bottom right. Click on link a device. Go ahead and scan it. Click on wait for scan. Once you do that, you'll notice that it should say up here running yes and connected yes. If it doesn't, just go back to the chat and then come back to channel. Sometimes it just has to refresh and then you'll see it is now connected. If that doesn't work, you can always use another method like Telegram. Let's go ahead and give this a test. Now I'm inside my WhatsApp. You want to send a message to yourself. Let's open up the chat here as well. And I'll just send myself a message that says, "Hey. " And then there you go. It says, "Hey, Paul, I'm here. What do you need? " So, we are now connected. I don't need to be at my computer for this. My computer doesn't need to be on because it's being hosted by Hostinger. I just send Frankbot messages through my WhatsApp and it's going to be able to answer me. So, what do you actually use OpenClaw for? So, the more information that you give it, the more you use it, the more it's actually going to be helpful in your own life. So, one of the first things I recommend that you do is tell it to

interview you to find out more information about you. So, it's going to be able to help you. It's going to ask you a whole bunch of questions. It's going to take you some time to answer all of them, but it's really important that you actually go through this. It's going to be able to remember all that. It has very good memory. And then the more it knows about you, the better it's going to be able to help you. Once it starts having that information, try to use it for everything. So, here on WhatsApp, another cool thing you can do is you can actually send it voice messages and it can understand them. So, I'm going to go ahead and start a voice message and just say, I'm looking to put together a grocery list for me. Every time I tell you groceries that I need, just add them to this grocery list. And then when I'm at the grocery store, I'll ask you what's on the list. And you can break it down for me by section. So like all the produce in one section, all the like Italian food together and different things like that to make it easier for me to navigate through the grocery store. So here you see both on WhatsApp and inside the interface here, Frank actually responded. It transcribed my voice note and it's asking me some follow-up questions. And so I'll just continue on here to make it easier to record. And I'll tell it, yeah, if I give you specifics, I want you to include those specifics. And let's break it down by different stores as well. So now it actually has a file that's keeping of all my grocery items. I can just tell it every time there's something I need to update. Like I go to the pantry, it reals I'm out of pasta. Just quickly record a voice memo saying I'm out of pasta. It's going to update that. And at the grocery store, it will give me a full list of everything that I need depending on which grocery store I'm at. So let me send it another voice message. Now I'm going to tell it, "Your personality is kind of boring me. Let's make your personality a bit more lively and exciting. Also, I never told you this, but I make videos on YouTube quite often. I talk about different AI tools. So, I need you to remember that. And way I need you to find a way to actually be able to help me do research. So, if I send you links to YouTube videos, you need to find a way to actually transcribe them and get information out of them to be able to help me. So, here it's updating its personality for me. It's remembering that I'm a YouTuber now, and it's talking through the issue. Okay, like we if there's captions available for the video, I can easily get it. If there's no captions, here's the options. This is what's really cool about Claudebot is that it can learn so much. You just have to tell it what you want it to learn and it's either going to figure it out or it's going to work with you to be able to figure it out. And once you have these basics set up, this is when you can begin to have a lot of fun with Open Claw, teaching it new things about you, new skills, new things it can learn to be able to help you out. The more you tinker with this, the more helpful it's going to be. And there's a huge community around this as well who are supporting each other and want everyone's bots to do well. So, they're really comparing different ways that you can use it. So, spend a lot of time with it. The more you spend on it, the more I think you're going to be amazed at all the things that OpenClaw can do for you. Now, remember, to get the most out of OpenClaw, you want this thing running 24/7 so that you can reach it whenever you want. You can even give it assignments throughout the day that it can then run for you. You can tell it at certain times of the day to do certain things, like even if you're sleeping, it can actually be doing work for you. And obviously, one way you can do this is by having it on your own computer. Um, that isn't always the most viable option. First of all, it's expensive. People are spending like $600 on these Mac minis. It's just not necessary. And there's always a problem of what happens if you lose power. internet? So, having it on something like a VPS, which is on all the time, like Hostinger's VPS, uh it's a really great option, I think. Plus, you get all these fast processors, so it's fast, it's just going to work, and it's just an easy setup. And if at any time you get stuck over here on the top right, they actually have an AI that can help you manage your server if you ever need it. Now, one important thing before we wrap up, because OpenClaw has access to your messaging apps and potentially sensitive data, security definitely matters. So, first, if you're not going to go this route, make sure you only download OpenClaw from the official source. There are bad actors out there trying to distribute fake versions with malware. So, just be careful. It's another reason I recommend Hostinger is because it's being set up the right way uh with the correct OpenClaw version. I also recommend that you take a few extra steps to hardening your VPS. There will be a link in the description for a VPS security hardening guide from Hostinger. Like I mentioned before, you never want to show your API keys to anyone. Don't send them in a chat. Don't send them to an AI like chat GBT if you're asking for help with setting things up. And don't post them anywhere publicly. Keep them locked away and safe. I'd also recommend against giving OpenClaw access directly to your important login. If you want to set up its own email account, do that

but don't give it your Gmail account password or even set it up for it. Uh you basically want to treat it as an employee uh that you're not going to give full access to right away or ever. Yeah. So, there you go. That's the easiest way I have found to get set up with OpenClaw for regular people in just a few minutes. If you want to sign up for Hostinger's VPS to be able to do this yourself, make sure to use the link down in the description. That's hostinger. com/paulj. And remember to use the code paulj to get an exclusive discount. then let me know in the comments section down below if you want to hear more about OpenClaw and all the different things that you can do with it as a regular user. I'm not a coder myself. A lot of people use this for coding or to have coding projects running all night long. That's not what I'm using it for. So, if you want to hear more ways that regular people are using this, let me know in the comment section down below and I'd be happy to make a follow-up video in a couple of weeks. Otherwise, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.