How To Make Money with AI Art
When AI became a thing, I knew I had to get to work.
I had been making money with various side hustles before then, but with AI, I knew I would literally be able to take it to the next level.
So, I had to sketch a plan, and that plan ended up being super profitable.
Photo by lucas Favre on Unsplash
Today, I’ll be pulling back the curtains to show you the AI art side hustle that could passively earn you hundreds of dollars.
What Exactly is this Side Hustle?
Well, first, it has everything to do with AI art and is also simple and perfect for beginners.
This side hustle is basically going to involve selling AI generated Cliparts on free marketplaces.
But why Cliparts?
Well because Cliparts are cute and everyone loves them.
We see them in our gift cards, stickers, t-shirts and they look really aesthetic.
Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash
While creatives use them to build their aesthetic and are willing to pay a fee to access ready-made clipart resources.
And that is where we come in with AI to help.
So, for this side hustle, we’ll be
- Using Leonardo.Ai (a free AI art Generator) to generate these raw images and illustrations.
- Then prepping those illustrations to sell on huge marketplaces like Etsy, Creative Fabrica and Teachers Pay Teachers.
How To Start Your Profitable Clipart Business with AI in 2024
Step 1: Asking ChatGPT for ideas and subniches.
The reason I love this side hustle idea is obvious; the possibilities are basically endless.
Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash
Because what can you not create a Clipart about?
There’s literally a clipart for every niche and concept you can think of.
From
- Animals
- Food and Drink
- Technology
- Nature
- Travel
- Business etc.
These endless ideas make consistently creating and selling new Clipart packs on these marketplaces super easy.
To make things even better, generating these ideas is super easy with ChatGPT.
Photo by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash
Simply head over to ChatGPT and ask for 10–20 Clipart niches.
ChatGPT Dashboard
Now, for each of these niches, ask ChatGPT for smaller sub-niches to reduce the competition in each niche.
ChatGPT Dashboard
If those niches are still super competitive, ask ChatGPT to niche down even more.
ChatGPT Dashboard
And with just this simple ideation process, I found out so many potential keywords for Cliparts to sell.
Step 2: Analysing the Keywords
Once you have a list of potential sub-niches to try out, the next step is to analyse each of those keywords.
If you’ve been a long-time reader here, you know why this is very important.
Many people try their hands at selling on marketplaces like Etsy and Creative Fabrica, but only few actually make it work.
Why?
Well, it’s definitely not luck.
It’s strategy.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
It doesn’t really matter what you’re trying to sell on these marketplaces.
The key is to stop trying to create a bunch of random products, only to sit and hope for the best.
You need to be proactive about the products you create.
My advice is to focus only on ideas you’ve carefully vetted and are sure will perform well.
These products should have
- Very low competition of less than 1000 search results on the marketplace of your choice
- and should be recommended as a dropdown keyword on your marketplace search bar.
Etsy’s Dropdown Search Bar
I just analysed one of the ideas ChatGPT suggested as a sub niche and it’s a perfect mix of high demand and low competition.
The keyword I found, Bagel Clipart has just.
- 924 search results: making it a perfect keyword to create Cliparts.
Screenshot of Etsy’s sent.
Step 3: Creating the Clipart (generating, upscaling and Packaging)
Once you have the ideas for your Clipart, you need to start generating your clipart on Leonardo.Ai.
Now you’re probably wondering, why Leonardo.AI and not Midjourney?
Everyone knows Midjourney is one of the best AI art generators there is on the Internet.
But how many people can actually afford it?
While Midjourney costs $10 per month, leonardo.Ai is.
- completely free for anyone to use.
- Does not require you to have a discord account.
- and is as good as Midjourney.
Now we know what Leonardo.Ai is, let’s get straight to work.
First, you need to Create your free account.
Screenshot of Leonardo.Ai home page
Once you’re on their website, you need to play around with different prompts.
Just like we analysed, I went on to create the following clipart with Leonardo.Ai.
It was a Bagel Clipart. Looks cute right?
Image made by Leonardo Ai
Now there’s a problem:
Creating high-quality AI art to sell isn’t as easy as
- coining a couple of words
- and hoping for Leonardo Ai to come up with what it can.
There’s an art to it.
Take this image for instance:
Image Made with AI
It’s still an image of a bagel, but what made the difference?
The prompt we used!
So, before you go on to generate a bunch of AI art on Leonardo.ai, you need to understand that it takes a level of expertise.
And you need to be ready to learn.
- how to create the perfect prompt for your images
- and which of Leonardo’s Art models would suit the art style you’re looking for.
For this, you need to practice on Leonardo.Ai and play around with its tools.
That was exactly what I did, and in less than three months or so, I became quite proficient at generating images that were highly sellable.
Where To Sell Your Clipart
Congratulations, you’ve created your clipart images bundle.
Now’s the time to sell your Clipart.
And for clarity’s sake, here are some of the best places to sell your Clipart.
For each of the Marketplaces, I’ll be showing you.
- how much traffic they get.
- and an example of people already making money selling Cliparts.
- Etsy
It’s crazy but Etsy gets over 454.2 million visitors every single month.
Etsy’s Traffic Insights by SimilarWeb
Now, I found a seller on Etsy with over 2,833 sales.
This shop sells just Clipart.
Screenshot of Etsy Shop Flourish ArtNZ
On average, each of their bundles are priced at a range of $2.37.
Meaning this shop has approximately made $6,714.
Imagine how many of these kinds of listings you could be creating with Leonardo ai to sell Etsy.
- Creative Fabrica
For Creative Fabrica, I’ll be using my creative Fabrica shop.
Now, I’ve made thousands of dollars passively from Creative Fabrica, and one of the things I sell is cliparts, as well as Canva templates.
In fact, here’s an example of a Clipart bundle I sell on my Creative Fabrica shop.
Clipart bundle by Author
For my stats on Creative Fabrica, I’ve grown over 396 followers with 2449 favorites and have made a total of $4,317.16.
Screenshot by Author
- Teachers Pay Teachers
Another highly profitable marketplace that is not often discussed for selling creative elements is Teachers Pay Teachers.
Teachers Pay Teachers is a marketplace for teachers by teachers.
On their marketplace, you’ll find all sorts of creative elements for teachers and that includes Cliparts.
Now, Teachers Pay Teachers’ marketplace gets over 26.2 million visitors per month.
Which is a lot of traffic frankly.
Teachers Pay Teachers traffic insights by SimilarWeb
I once tried selling on their marketplace for about a month and made around $42.96 passively.
Screenshot by Author
Conclusion
I won’t lie; creating cliparts to sell on marketplaces was more of a hobby-side hustle for me.
And while they were perfect for passive income, I had a good time playing around with Leonardo ai trying to come up with the perfect illustration.
So, if you’re creative but still want to have fun generating passive income, this is one of the best side hustles to try.
