I'm going to try to sell physical AI art prints for 30 days.
I'll be covering the entire process from generating to printing to advertising.
With people reportedly making hundreds of dollars a day.
Let's see how much money I can make with my prints.
The first step is to find an AI art generator.
I'll be mainly using Midjourney Night Cafe and Stable Diffusion, which can generate unlimited images for free.
Let's generate a chicken wing oil painting.
That looks finger-lickin' good.
The plan is to sell my AI art on Etsy.
It is an online marketplace that focuses on arts and crafts.
While buyers on Etsy love art, they don't just buy any art.
I'm not sure how many of them would hang chicken wings in their living room, other than this guy.
What I need to do is research art niches that are searched, often on Etsy, and sell art in those niches.
I scoured Etsy's search suggestions and used eRank, which is an Etsy keyword research tool, to find popular art niches.
Some I found include mid-century modern, abstract art, and flowers.
The idea is to generate and sell across various niches, in hopes that I find success in at least one of them.
On Etsy, most art is sold as digital prints, essentially the digital file of the artwork.
They're mainly for customers who want to save money by printing out the artwork themselves.
I don't want those customers.
I want customers who are willing to pay to not deal with printing.
I've chosen to sell physical prints over digital prints because they typically sell for more and can generate more profit per sale.
Now, does selling physical prints mean I have to pull out a printer?
Nope.
Not if I use Print On Demand.
Print On Demand is a process where you get a company to print custom art and products for you only when an order is made.
There's no need to handle the printing, packaging, or shipping.
They do it all for you.
The Print On Demand service I'll be using is Printful.
They offer a variety of wall art products to print on, including canvases, metal prints, framed posters, you name it.
I'll be selling my AI art on their enhanced matte paper poster in multiple sizes, from 5 by 7 inches, which is the size of this, to 24 by 36 inches, which is about the size of that.
Listing a printable product on Etsy is simple.
All you got to do is connect your accounts together and add a new product.
You choose your sizes, upload your AI art, and oh!
Right, most AI art generators output images at low resolutions, around 500 to 1,000 pixels wide.
If I wanna print my images big, I'm gonna need to upscale them.
There are a ton of paid and free AI image upscalers out there.
I'll be using Gigapixel AI.
It can upscale images up to six times its original resolution by using AI to fill in the missing details.
My AR is ready to be uploaded to Printful.
And boom, it's listed as a draft on Etsy.
Printful makes things incredibly easy, and I'm excited to say that they're today's video sponsor.
You can check them out at the link in the description below.
With my draft listing up, it's time to edit it to prepare it for sale.
There are five important elements that need to be done right in order for a product to sell on Etsy.
The first is the photos.
They should be professional looking mockups designed to attract customers.
I searched on Google and found several free mockups to use.
With Photoshop, I added my art to them, and my listing is now looking fresh.
Next, the title.
Its main purpose is to help people find the listing through Etsy's search and Etsy's algorithm.
I'm going to fill it up with keywords that people search for in my artworks niche.
I'll be doing the same with tags, which is the third element and serves a similar purpose to the title.
The fourth element is shipping.
People love free shipping, and Etsy even prioritizes listings that have it.
So I'm going to offer it to customers in the US and Canada.
Speaking of which, pricing.
It is the last important element.
As I'm offering my prints in a range of sizes, I've priced each size differently.
I fiddled around with the E-Rank Profit Calculator, taking into account all my costs, to give me prices with a profit margin of around 30 to 45.
The exception is with the smallest size.
I offer 5 by 7 inches, which only gives me a profit margin of about 25.
I intentionally set it lower because it is the lowest price in your listing that is shown in Etsy's search and on your profile.
One last tactic I'm going to do to make my listing more attractive is to put it on sale.
I'm going to bump up my listing's prices by 15%, then put the listing on sale for 15% off.
This gives customers the perception of a good deal without affecting the bottom line.
And here we are.
Our first listing is done and live.
Now to repeat this process for all the other AI art that I've generated.
Let's hope we make some sales over these next 30 days.
It's day two and I'm already in trouble.
My account got suspended.
Is Etsy cracking down on AI art?
I did some digging and apparently random suspensions happen all the time, especially with new Etsy stores.
So I'm not too worried.
I'm just going to pause the counter until I get my account back.
If I get it back.
One week later.
So I got an email from Etsy this morning and it didn't say much.
It didn't say why I was suspended, but it did say that I am now unsuspended.
We back, baby.
Over the next two weeks, I worked on generating AI art prints and created 36 listings.
It was looking good on my storefront.
Now, there are two main ways to have your listings seen on Etsy.
The first is through search.
Showing up isn't guaranteed though, which brings us to the second way, Etsy ads.
You can pay to show up.
I think my listings are good enough to get organic search traffic, so I don't think I'll need ads.
Or so I thought.
It's day 15 and let me break it to you.
Things aren't going well.
My listings are barely getting any views or visits.
And because of that, I've made no sales either.
It's strange because my art, photos, titles, tags, they're all pretty good.
Even my prices are cheaper than other listings.
My guess is that my listings aren't niche enough.
For example, I have a listing under mid-century modern wall art.
And if I search that keyword up, I can see over 60,000 results.
Yeah, my listing will never show up here.
I think I need to generate AI art that targets smaller niches and use keywords that have less than 10000 search results.
Keywords like the names of specific locations or animals or aliens.
Hopefully, this will make my listing stand out.
Holy, what is going on?
My listings are blowing up.
Most of these visits are from the direct and other traffic channels.
That doesn't make sense.
I'm not sharing my Etsy shop anywhere.
I'm reading on Google that visits from that channel are most likely bots.
That is crazy.
That means only six real people have visited my listing so far.
Six real people over the last 18 days.
Are you kidding me?
I don't even know if I'll be able to even sell one print by day 30.
I am honestly worried now.
By day 26, I'd created 24 more listings for a total of 60, yet I still had no sales.
I was feeling stressed and getting desperate.
With five days left in the challenge, I had no choice but to make a last-ditch attempt to make sales that I'd been avoiding since the start of the challenge.
I'm going to run Etsy ads.
I was really hoping to keep everything organic, but I don't think I'll have a chance to make a sale otherwise.
I'm going to spend $1 a day on ads and I don't know if it's going to do anything.
At this point, it can't get any worse.
I'll see you on day 30.
It's the end of the challenge and what a roller coaster it was.
So, did I end this challenge with a sale?
I did.
Etsy ads actually did something.
After running it for five days, it net me 1,765 views, 16 clicks, and one sale.
We sold one AI art print of a purple peacock.
You can't get any more niche than that.
Oh my God.
We just got an order.
Do you see that?
Let's add that to the total right now.
With two AIR prints sold, one in the five by inch size and one in the 16 by 20 inch size, I earned a total revenue of 4598.
For my expenses, printing costs $17.50, shipping costs $9.98, and Etsy ads cost $3.56.
Etsy also charged me 299 in transaction fees, 199 in processing fees, 225 in tax on seller fees and 20 cents per listing in listing fees.
I had 60 listings, so that cost me $12.
In total, my net income for this challenge is negative $4.29.
Yup.
I lost money.
But I wouldn't immediately call this an outright flop.
My listings were only up for 30 days, some even less, and I only ran ads for five days.
With a bit more time, I probably would be able to sell one more art print and be in the green.
And actually, if I count the free 40 Etsy listings that you can get by using my link in the description below, I would have saved 8 and made a profit of 429.
Regardless, my takeaway from this challenge is that selling AI art prints on Etsy is definitely not easy.
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