Introduction
This guy, Byron, made $38,700 with this, and this other guy made $28,896. 2,437 with this, and you can do this using a free ChatGPT account and a Google Drive account. The more I looked into this, I was shocked by how many people are making money with this. Like, here’s a woman named Jazman who made $2,493 with this, and here’s another guy who made $40,200.
Using AI for Image Creation
Give me some good prompts for images if I’m going to use them as t-shirt designs. Now, we’re not going to be selling t-shirts here; don’t worry—just stick with me. This is a much easier business model that expands way beyond t-shirts and requires no selling of physical products or shipping. I didn’t even know about this business model until I saw all these people making huge money with it that I showed you in the screenshots.
Setting Up an Etsy Account
Now, the next thing we will do is sign up for an Etsy account. You just search in Google for Etsy and click on “Sign In” right there, and you can click “Continue with Google.” That’s kind of the simplest way to do it. And again, we’re not going to be selling homemade crafts or any kind of t-shirts or anything like you normally would sell on Etsy. This is a totally unique Etsy loophole that you probably have never seen before.
Creating Your Etsy Shop
Once you have created the Etsy account, I want you to click right here “Get Started,” and then we’re going to click “Let’s Do This.” And right here, we’re just going to click “I’m starting to sell for the first time ever.” And for this one, we’re just going to scroll to the bottom and we’re going to click “Skip this question.” We are going to click on “Start your shop,” and right here, we’re just going to put in our language preferences. I’m putting US dollars for mine, CU; I’m in the United States. Then we’re going to name our shop, and I’m just going to name it “Design Elites.” You can make up a name for your shop; it doesn’t matter what it’s called. Then, pretty much, your shop is set up and ready to go for this Etsy loophole.
Analyzing Successful Etsy Stores
Now, you’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this, so let me show you some live examples of this loophole in action. To do this, we’re going to have to do a little spying on some different Etsy shop owners. This is a website called Allura, and what Allura does is it goes through and pulls data from all the Etsy stores that are out there, and it can actually show you how much they’re making.
Case Study: Epoca Shop on Etsy
So, I just brought up this shop here called Epoca, which is doing the exact thing this loophole I’m about to teach you involves. You can see right here they made $28,896 on this specific Etsy loophole. If we go over to Etsy and look at the Epoca shop, you can see that most of their items are just like this—they’re selling downloadable packs of 300,000 t-shirt designs. They’re not selling the shirts; they’re selling a downloadable file that contains thousands of unique designs that you could put on t-shirts.
Case Study: Byron’s Success
If we go over to this guy, Byron, you can see he’s doing the exact same thing, selling t-shirt designs. If I copy his store name and paste it into this Allura spy tool and search for it, you can see he’s made $38,711 selling these downloadable t-shirt design packs.
Case Study: Embroidery Gallery PDF
If you look at this one, “Embroidery Gallery PDF,” this person has made $222,450 selling downloadable graphic packs just like this. And the nice thing is, we can generate all of these images using AI in just a few minutes.
Setting Up Your Etsy Product Listings
Let’s go back to our Etsy setup because we only got partway through it. I wanted to show you the income potential. This is where we stopped in our store setup, and at this point, it’s asking us what kind of item we’re selling. As I showed you, we are actually selling a digital file. So, you want to check “supply or tool to make things,” and when did you make it? We’re going to put 2020-2024 because we’re making it right now. Then, we click “Save and Continue.”
Creating Your Digital Product Listing
Now we’re going to click “Next” and put in the title of the item. I have a little notepad text file that I’m using here, so I can copy and paste it over. You could just put something like “Vintage Retro T-shirt Design Bundle.” I like to include other keywords like PNG files, custom apparel, DIY projects, and digital, just so the Etsy search will bring up my product when people are searching for these kinds of things.
Uploading Your Designs to Etsy
Next, I’m going to drag some t-shirt designs that I have. I’m going to show you how to generate these using AI in just a second. I’m uploading 10 different images. I would encourage you to upload as many images as you can. Again, we’re going to have hundreds and hundreds of these by the time we’re done with this video.
Using ChatGPT to Generate Design Ideas
Next, I’m just going to put this description in, which I had ChatGPT write for me. The next step is to actually use AI to generate all the images that we are going to be selling. You’re not going to have to create any images yourself; they’re all going to be created by AI. Do you remember earlier when I had you set up a ChatGPT account? We’re going to go back to that and remember I had you type in this prompt. So basically, we’re going to use ChatGPT to give us our ideas for the t-shirts.
Generating AI Designs Using Leonardo
You can see it’s given me 10 different ideas, and I like this one down here: “Retro Illustration of a Classic 60s Muscle Car.” Then, I’m going to go over to this free tool called Leonardo paste that text directly in, and have it generate the t-shirt design. And you can see right there that it’s created eight different designs that can be put on t-shirts and included in our t-shirt design pack.
Using Runway ML for Bulk Image Generation
What I actually recommend that you do, though, to make this faster is sign up for an account on a site called Runway ML. This service allows you to create up to 1,000 images all at once, so you don’t have to keep clicking the button over and over to reach a large number of designs. Leonardo only lets you do eight at a time, but Runway ML lets you do hundreds at a time.
Tips for Using Runway ML
Now, the disadvantage of Runway ML is that it’s a paid tool, so it’s going to be a little more expensive to use. But I think it’s worth it to save you time. In Runway ML, you just click the batch button, and that’s going to let you generate hundreds of designs instead of just a few.
Preparing Your Designs for Upload
Once you have all your designs, you’ll need to upload them to Google Drive. This way, you can store your images online and deliver them to customers without emailing each one individually. I’ll show you how to do it.
Creating a Google Doc for Digital Deliveries
Now, you’re going to create a Google Doc, which will act as the delivery method for your products. Etsy won’t allow us to upload an entire giant file, so we’ll create a small file with the download link.
Delivering Your Products to Customers
Once your Google Doc is ready, you will share the link to your Google Drive folder with the customer. Etsy will send them a link to download the designs via the PDF you’ve created.
Expanding Your Business
Once you’ve uploaded your designs and created your listings, you can also sell the same design packs on other platforms like Redbubble and Zazzle. To take it a step further, you can also set up an email list and offer subscription services, allowing customers to receive new design packs every month.
Automating Your Business
You can set up automated payments through PayPal to ensure that customers are billed on autopilot for their monthly design packs.
Conclusion and Next Steps
You can see how powerful this idea is and how you can expand it into an autopilot monthly business. If you’re interested, I offer a free training class that shows you how to set up this kind of business model.
