5 Ways to Make Money With AI Art
Five different ways to make money with AI art that works? I will teach you genius new prompts for generating stunning AI images that you didn’t know. Let’s dive into the blog.
Wisdom Story Videos
Dream Spark's YouTube channel is four months old; it’s crazy. In less than two weeks of posting videos, their first video went viral. When you filter out their popular video, you will see a video with 3.1 million views. It’s a glorified slideshow with AI images and AI voiceover. Think about that video. YouTube lets you make money from videos that you post with their monetization program. YouTube assets are available in over 200 countries around the world. It lets you earn money by splitting advertising revenue with YouTube on your videos.
Average videos on YouTube have a $3 and 30 cents to $4 and 40 cents RPM. By the way, if you’ve never heard that phrase RPM before, it means revenue per mile. It means that revenue per 1000 views. On average, a video on YouTube earns $3 and 30 cents to $4 and 40 cents per 1000 views that it gets. If you do the maths, then it means that, on average, we can estimate what a video is like, which has had 3.1 million views and earned the creator $10,234 to $13,640. It could be even more because some videos on YouTube get an even higher RPM.
If you watch the video for a moment, it is super duper basic. It is an effective slideshow featuring AI art, which was generated with an AI art app like Mid Journey, and it had a filter put on top of it. If you listen to the voiceover, it’s an AI voice. Chances are the script for the video would’ve also been generated with ChatGPT. It is an AI-generated video.
It was the only channel making wisdom story videos, creating these wisdom stories. For example, InspiraZen is nine months old, and it has over a hundred thousand subscribers. They make similar wisdom story videos using AI-generated art and voiceovers. Their videos get tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of views.
Eye of Wisdom’s YouTube channel is just ten months old. It’s creating videos that are getting tens of thousands of views. If you filter popular videos, you will see that they are getting hundreds of thousands of views. You need to have 4,000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers to get monetized. When you get your 1000 subscribers on YouTube. You’ve got to have enough views that you’ll already have your 4,000 watch hours, too.
Suppose we come to Social Blade. In Dream Spark's first month of posting videos, they gained over 13,000 subscribers. This means chances are they reached the YouTube threshold for monetization within days. How can you generate similar viral AI art?
I’ll be generating my AI art with Mid Journey as my app of choice. You can use whatever app that you like. So if you prefer DALL-E, you could choose to use that. Or, if you prefer a free AI art tool like Leonardo, you could use that, too. Either way, it’s up to you.
You come to Mid Journey and write a prompt. I described the monk that I wanted Mid Journey to generate, including his age and pose. I also specified the angle I wanted the image to be made from, and I specified the setting. I described how I wanted the image. I also noted the quality of the image that I wanted to make.
Most people assume that the more detail, the better. But in my experience, lower detail can sometimes have advantages. It can create the feeling of an image being more mystical and calming, which is why I picked that.
After that, I also set the aspect ratio parameter to 16 by 9. The aspect ratio parameter lets you change the size and dimensions of the image that Mid Journey generates for you. I picked mine to be made in 16 by nine because, on YouTube, the aspect ratio of a standard YouTube video that isn’t a YouTube shorts video is 16 by 9. Then that was it. I let Mid Journey go ahead and do its magic.
Now, obviously, in practice, you would want to get Mid Journey to do lots of generations for you to pick from; you will choose one of the images that you like.
Creating and Selling Pillows
Using Print on Demand, you can make and sell your own cool pillows that feature AI artwork. There are two ways that you can make money by selling pillows. The first is that you can come to a print-on-demand marketplace, such as zazzle.com or redbubble.com. You can sell the AI art that you generate onto products that they print and sell, like pillows, for a profit.
You just upload your art onto the website. You get paid a commission whenever it sells a product like a pillow. There is another way too. You can also come to a general online marketplace like Etsy. On Etsy, throw pillows featuring cute artwork and patterns are also popular.
You can go to a print-on-demand app like Printify and then choose a pillow from the catalog to customize. Then, you upload your AI art piece onto the pillow. Then, you can list your pillow for sale on Etsy using the Printify Etsy integration and price it at a market price. Then, you can earn a profit each time your pillow sells.
I’ll show you something on Etsy. There is one style of pillow that is super trendy right now, and that is William Morris-inspired Throw pillows. Some stores in this niche have made over a hundred thousand dollars in the past year selling trending pillow designs.
If you’ve never heard about William Morris is a historical British designer. He was very famous for revitalizing his interest in traditional British-style textiles with his artwork. On Etsy, when you create designs that look similar to the textiles that he designed, they look amazing when printed onto pillows. That is why they’ve been so popular with customers.
I’ll tell you something, for better or for worse. Mid Journey is amazing at taking inspiration from other artists. Especially historical artists, who replicate their style onto new images. To make my own William Morris-inspired Pillow, Come to Mid Journey and prompted it by noting William Morris’s name. I explained the type of image that I wanted, and I prompted it with the style that I wanted. I added the aesthetic, and I also added the prompt, Butterfly.
Suppose you take a look at the bestselling William Morrison-inspired pillows on Etsy. You’ll find that they’re themed around some sort of subject, such as a frog. That I’d pick butterflies to be my subject, and then that was it. I went ahead and let Mid Journey do its magic and create my design. Choose one of the images you like the most.
Create and Sell MidJourney Prompts
Did you know that Etsy has a thriving market for Midjourney prompts? It’s not Etsy that you can make money selling prompts on. There is a dedicated marketplace for them called Prompt Base. You can sell prompts for any AI app like Mid Journey, Chat GPT, DALL·E, and even Leonardo. Mid-journey is the most popular.
I would like to give you some ideas on what sort of prompts you could create to sell. Search for the currently selling best prompt for The Journey on Prompt Base. They range from $2 and 99 cents to $7 and 99 cents.
However, something that is interesting is that one of the most popular prompts on Prompt Base. It was priced at 14$ and 99 cents. It is not very surprising. They won’t have to buy the product mockups and they won’t take their own photos. They can save good amount of money.
Creating and Selling AI Art Stickers
Using AI art, you can make money by creating and selling stickers. Stickers have always been a super popular niche on Etsy. A lot of the best-selling designs feature cute animals or trending memes and themes. So, I’ll show you some fun examples of how you can make your own.
Come to Mid Journey and I prompted it to create a cute frog. I used words like digital art, and I added terms like cute to describe the style that I wanted. I also added stickers to remind Mid Journey that I wanted it to be a sticker.
After I’d done this, I came and added the aspect ratio parameter, changing the size and the dimension to be two by 3. Choose the image that you want; what you can do then is take the picture and open them up in a photo editing app like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. You can turn your images into stickers by cutting them out. You can then add your own unique patterns. For Example, IExamplesome daisies.
I find that Canva is great for adding extra elements to your stickers, too. But once you’ve finished editing, with the pillows. You can come and sell them on Etsy using Printify’s integration to print and ship them. Alternatively, you could do everything on Redbubble.
AI Art Stock Photos
Last but not least, we have Stock Photos. Did you know that if you create AI-generated art, you can now sell it on stock photo websites like Adobe Stock? Stock photo websites are websites that businesses use to buy high-quality photos and images. They can be used for things like advertising and promotional material.
As you might imagine, AI-generated art is very useful because it’s much faster and cheaper to make. Paying for someone to come and take physical photos. All you need to do is create an account with a stock photo website, such as Adobe Stock, and start submitting your images.
The photo stock website still has some requirements. You need to include a note that tells them how you made the image and which AI app you used. if you use Midjourney, be sure to note that.
I want to give you some inspiration for the type of AI art that sells the best. I’ve noticed that the type of images that seem to be doing the best are surreal nature scenes. For example, an ocean scene. It’s one of the more popular AI-generated stock photos on Adobe Stock. To create a similar surreal ocean scene. Come to Mid Journey, and I prompted it to create a surreal wave inspired by Katsushika Hokusai.
If you’ve never heard of him before, Katsushika Hokusai is a historical Japanese artist. It has created the Great Wave of Kanagawa, which has become an iconic image.
Coming back to the prompt, I specified that I wanted it to be a painting, and I described that I wanted to feature a whale in my scene. After that, I added the aspect ratio parameter and noted that I wanted it to be made in 4 by 3. But you know, you could also choose 16 by 9 if you prefer that too. Choose the image that you like. Read the guidelines for images in Adobe stock before publishing the image.
