FREE Easy Method using Leonardo AI to make $300/day!

I Tried This “Free” AI Art Tool And Made $300 Per Day — Here’s How You Can Do The Same

6 min readJan 9, 2024

Little-Known Digital Product Ideas

AI art generators are taking the world by storm. As an entrepreneur looking to generate some quick cash, I decided to try out one of these tools for myself.

What I discovered shocked me — with just a few simple steps, I was able to start earning hundreds of dollars per day. Keep reading to find out what tool I used and how you can leverage AI to start making money today.

We strongly recommend that you check out our guide on how to take advantage of AI in today’s passive income economy.

Frustrated With Expensive Midjourney, I Discovered This “Free” Alternative

Like many others, I had heard about Midjourney, the AI art generator that can create stunning images from text descriptions. Eager to generate some cool graphics for a client’s product, I signed up for a free trial. But soon I was hit with the dreaded “due to high demand” message. No free trial for me.

Disappointed, I started hunting around for Midjourney alternatives — specifically free options. Eventually I stumbled upon Leonardo AI. This new AI art generator is still in beta testing, but it’s already impressing users with its ability to rival Midjourney. Even better, Leonardo AI has a statement on its Discord that “all rights to an image belong to the person who generated it.” Unlike Midjourney, there’s no need to pay monthly fees to own your creations.

It didn’t take me long to switch over to Leonardo AI completely. In my experience, it actually outperforms Midjourney in some key ways. And best of all, it’s 100% free to use. Keep reading to understand why I’ve made the switch and how Leonardo AI can help you start monetizing AI art today.

Here’s Why Leonardo AI Beats Out Midjourney

Getting started with Leonardo AI is simple. Just visit their website and create an account. You can register with Google, Apple, Microsoft or just use an email and password.

After picking a username, Leonardo AI lets you select interests and confirm you’re over 18. From there, just choose your user role and you’re ready to start creating!

The great thing about Leonardo AI is that there’s no need for a Discord account. It’s a web app, making it more convenient than Midjourney in my opinion.

Leonardo AI uses a token system, giving you 150 free tokens per day. Each token lets the AI generate one image for you. So essentially, you get 150 free images daily — like having an entire art studio at your fingertips!

Browsing the homepage, you can see the impressive images already being created by the AI. But Leonardo AI also has some key advantages over Midjourney:

You can view the text prompt used to generate each image, which helps when crafting your own prompts.
There’s a built-in tool for removing backgrounds with one click.
Extra features like Image Generation, Message Generation, and Alchemy V2 help you craft more complex and detailed prompts.
You can adjust image resolution and guide scale to fine tune the AI’s output.

Overall, I’ve found Leonardo AI to provide a smoother, more user-friendly experience than Midjourney. And again — it’s completely free!

Now let’s dive into the money-making possibilities with Leonardo AI…

Selling AI-Generated Mug Designs for Thousands in Passive Income

To understand the money-making potential here, take a look at this mug on Etsy. It’s a simple floral print design that has brought in $37,000 in profit for the seller!

Using AI art generators like Leonardo AI, we can create similar repeating prints and patterns — no graphic design skills required. Then we can leverage print-on-demand (POD) services like Printify to get our designs onto mugs, shirts, pillows and more. When someone orders a product with our design, Printify handles the printing, shipping, and customer service. We simply collect the profits!

Let’s walk through an example. This cactus mug has generated around $2,000 in sales on Etsy. To make our own similar mug design, we’d enter this text prompt into Leonardo AI:

orchid plant in watercolor painting style, sharp spiky on white background

After generating an image we like with the white background, we can upload it directly to Printify and apply it to a mug product. In just minutes, we have a mug ready to list on Etsy!

But there’s one more trick for creating mug designs that perfectly fit the printable area:

AR 293x151: [your text prompt here]

This creates an extra wide image that fills mug products edge to edge when printed. Now we can generate as many unique designs as we want and apply them to products in Printify with ease.

List them in your Etsy shop and you’ll be earning passive income in no time! Why stay stuck in a 9 to 5 when apps like Leonardo AI make it so easy to leverage AI for profits? Keep reading for even more ways to monetize AI art.

From Random Patterns to $460,000 in Sales — How I’m Copying This Top Etsy Shop

Beyond mugs, there are tons of printable products you can pair with your AI designs, including t-shirts, phone cases, pillows and more. But I discovered one of the most profitable avenues is selling seamless repeating patterns as digital downloads.

Take this Etsy shop for example. Jame Arts sells primarily pattern graphics and has brought in around $460,000 in revenue! These types of seamless patterns are perfect for crafters and designers to use on websites, packaging, textiles and more.

So how can we easily create similar patterns with AI? It’s simple when you use Leonardo AI.

To generate a repeating tile pattern, just add “ — tile” to the end of your text prompt. For example:

pastel flowers and leaves pattern --tile

This signals to the AI that you want it to generate a seamless, repeating graphic. With a little fine-tuning, you can create unlimited pattern designs to sell!

Once you have a high quality pattern, uploading it to Etsy as a digital download takes just minutes. With this business model, you keep around 91% of the profits since there’s minimal fees or overhead.

And if you don’t want to deal with an Etsy shop, you can also sell patterns on Redbubble, Society6 and other print-on-demand platforms. They handle all the product listings, printing and shipping — you just provide the designs and collect income!

Listen Up Side Hustlers: This Is Your Gateway To Easy Passive Income

Between mugs, apparel, digital downloads and more, the possibilities are endless when it comes to monetizing AI-generated art. And remember, sites like Leonardo AI provide completely free access to these powerful graphic creation tools.

You don’t need much time, money or even design skills to get started with this business model. In fact, it may be the easiest side hustle out there right now. Just generate a few patterns or product designs each day, upload them to POD sites and Etsy, then watch the passive sales roll in.

Even if you’re not ready to quit your day job, a side business like this can provide a nice stream of supplemental income each month. And it’s a great way to get your feet wet selling online if you have hopes of launching a full-time entrepreneurial career someday.

The world of AI art is changing rapidly. I hope this inside look at my own experiences helps you understand the money making potential with tools like Leonardo AI. Don’t let overwhelm or tech barriers stop you from getting started. Begin experimenting with simple prompts and designs today — you may just end up building a highly profitable passive income stream!