I'm going to try to sell AI art patterns for 30 days.
I'll be going over the whole process, from generating to uploading to advertising.
With people reportedly making hundreds of thousands of dollars, let's see how much money I can make.
The first step is to pick an AI art generator.
I'll be specifically choosing Midjourney for its features.
Let's generate a watercolor eggplant.
Ooh, straight from the farm.
Now, the goal is not to generate just any art.
It's to generate patterns, art that can be seamlessly repeated.
People use them to create scrapbooks.
Cards, notebook covers, packaging and print on demand products like phone cases, pillows and mugs.
The list goes on and on, which makes patterns a potentially great product to sell.
There seems to be a big need for them.
This AI eggplant art doesn't seamlessly repeat.
So let's make one that does.
To do so with mid journey, I simply need to add the command dash dash tile to the end of my prompt.
This will make the art seamlessly repeat and generate an AI pattern.
We got eggplants for days.
The plan is to sell on Etsy.
It is an online marketplace that focuses on arts and crafts and is a popular place to shop patterns, or what they also call digital paper.
To determine what patterns I should sell.
I'm gonna use Etsy's search suggestions and E-Rank, a free Etsy keyword research tool, to find popular niches that don't have too much competition.
Some I've stumbled upon include certain types of flowers, materials, and food.
I wasn't playing with those eggplants.
On Etsy.
Patterns are typically sold as a 300 DPI image that measures 3600 by 3600 pixels in resolution.
There's a problem.
Midjourney can't export AI patterns in those measurements.
Its maximum output is 72 DPI and 1,024 by 1,024 pixels.
That's not gonna cut it.
So I'm gonna need to upscale.
There are many free AI image upscalers out there, but I'll be using a paid one called Gigapixel AI.
It can convert images to 300 DPI and upscale them up to six times their original resolution.
So instead of upscaling to the standard 3,600, I'm going 6,144 pixels.
Gotta hook my customers up with that premium product.
Patterns on Etsy are usually sold in packs, so I'm gonna sell mine in packs of eight.
With all my AI patterns generated and upscaled, I'm now ready to create a listing on Etsy.
There are five essential elements of a digital product listing that I need to complete before publishing.
The first is to upload my AI patterns for my buyers to download.
But Etsy only lets you add up to five digital files.
Five digital files, eight patterns, the math doesn't add up.
How am I gonna do this?
What I'm gonna do is upload all my AI patterns into a folder on Google Drive.
Then I'm gonna grab the link to it and place it in the document.
I'll include some branding, my thanks, and a reminder to leave a five-star review.
I'm gonna export the document as a PDF and then upload it to Etsy.
And there you have it, problem solved.
Next up, the photos.
Using Photoshop, I've designed two templates to use.
One for the thumbnail, which displays a title and a quick preview of all the listing's patterns, and one that gives a full preview of four patterns.
With eight patterns per pack, I'll need to prepare two of these per listing.
Third on the list is pricing.
To be real, patterns on Etsy don't sell for much.
They average around $1 to $5 per pack.
On a positive note, other than the initial time and money it takes to generate patterns and Etsy's fees, there aren't really any other costs.
The profit margin is 70 to 90%.
It's high.
I'm going to use eRank's profit calculator to determine my exact pricing.
Paying in mind Etsy's fees and a 50 discount that I'm going to apply to all my listings, my final sale price will be 249.
The last two elements are the title and the tags.
I'm gonna fill both with popular keywords related to digital paper and my AI patterns niche.
A few good ways to come up with keywords are by looking at similar listings Etsy, search suggestions, E-rank and AI.
Using ChatGPT, I can easily generate a bunch of different keywords to use.
Note that ChatGPT isn't perfect, so you're going to need to know how to use it properly.
In the description I've put a free ebook that you can download that covers the best practices when using AI for SEO and keyword research.
For example, one of them is to be ready to fact check your SEO findings.
Not every keyword ChatGPT gives will be good, so you may want to double check them with another keyword research tool like eRank.
The eBook also includes tips on using AI for marketing in general, a list of the most popular AI tools right now, as well as a great overview of how these AI tools are being used in marketing today.
It's really interesting stuff that I recommend you download and check out.
This free resource is provided by HubSpot, which is today's video sponsor.
A big thanks to them for hooking us up. and publish.
The listing is live.
My eggplants are out and about.
Now to create a bunch more listings, and I mean a lot more.
Let's see how many AI patterns I can sell in the next 30 days.
So for the past week, I've been grinding.
I've created over 100 new listings and over 800 individual AI patterns in total.
All I see now are just patterns everywhere.
To help with creating prompts, I've been using the awesome Midjourney command forward slash, describe.
Let's say I came across this pattern of oranges and wanted a prompt that could generate something similar to it.
I can write forward slash describe to Midjourney and then upload a file of that pattern.
Midjourney will then analyze that pattern and spit out four different prompts that I can use to generate something like it.
It's magical and has saved me a lot of time and guesswork.
Other than that, no sales so far.
Hopefully, all these new listings will bring in some soon.
Hey, someone favorited my listing.
I've actually been getting quite a few favorites recently.
It's a good sign.
However, it's not a sale.
It's day 15, halfway into the challenge, and I still got nothing.
With Etsy, it does take some time for new listings to percolate into the search and algorithm, but I got a challenge to complete.
It's time to crank things up and turn on Etsy ads.
I'm going to spend $1 a day and hope for the best.
The last time I turned on Etsy ads, when I tried selling AI art prints for 30 days, it landed me sales real quick.
So I hope I get the same luck this time around.
Fingers crossed.
Unfortunately, luck wasn't on my side.
By day 23, I still had no sales.
The ads weren't helping, or at least they weren't helping fast enough.
Things weren't looking good.
I'm wondering, do my patterns look bad?
Are my thumbnails okay?
My titles, tags, prices?
I guess I could speculate an infinite number of reasons.
My best guess is that there's just a lot of competition out there.
That's limiting the exposure and value of my listings.
My account has no reviews either, which doesn't help.
If I did have more time, I think this is what I'd do.
I consider evolving the business model and actually using these AI patterns to make and sell my own print on demand products like mugs.
It's a natural step forward.
That's pretty easy to do and could not only land me more sales, but more profit per sale.
Maybe.
I'll see you on day 30.
We've made it to the end of the challenge.
Before I reveal to you if it was an utter failure or if a miracle happened in the last week, here are my honest thoughts.
Selling AI patterns is not as easy as it seems.
Everyone and their grandma can whip up an AI pattern with Midjourney.
It's dead simple, but it also leads to a very saturated market on Etsy.
You can combat this by niching down on certain topics, but then you still face another problem low prices.
To put it into perspective, for me to profit $100 at my listings prices, I need to sell 53 packs.
That's potentially 53 customers I need to convince.
It's already hard enough to convince one.
Plus, I'm not even considering advertising costs.
To make sales, you'll likely need to turn on Etsy ads.
Its cost will cut deeper into revenue, which already isn't much, which means you'll need to sell even more AI patterns to see decent profits.
It's rough.
Okay.
It's time for the review.
I sold a total number of two AI patterns, one vintage lace pattern and one Navajo tribal pattern.
I earned a total revenue of $7 and 47 cents for my expenses.
Mid journey costs $31 and 50 cents for a one month subscription.
And that's the ads cost $15 over 15 days.
Etsy also charged me 48 cents in transaction fees, 73 cents in processing fees, 15 cents in tax on seller fees and 20 cents per listing in listing fees.
I had 107 listings, so that cost me $21.40.
In total, my net income for this challenge is negative $61.79.
Dang!
Comment below if you want to see me sell AI mugs for 30 days.
Other than that, be sure to like this video, subscribe if you haven't already, and peace out.
