1. Introduction
Hey, I’m Anastasia, and today I’m diving into a beginner-friendly AI side hustle that’s profitable and simple to start. We’re talking about an online business that can earn you up to $30,000 per month. You can do this entirely from home without ever handling a single product. You can get it up and running in less than a day using AI tools if you follow the steps I’ll share in this blog.
2. Validating the Business Idea
You’re probably wondering, “Can this really be done?” Let me show you real examples of this business model and how much money some businesses make.
On my screen, you can see the analytics of a seller making about $30,000 per month. I’m checking this store’s analytics on Alura, an Etsy seller software. In the past year, they made over $1.5 million! That’s life-changing money, and they did it all from the comfort of their home.
We highly encourage you to explore our recommendations! Beginner’s Guide to Making Money Online in 2025
3. Introducing the Business Model: Print on Demand (POD)
Print on Demand is a business model that operates across various product categories, with t-shirts and custom mugs likely coming to mind initially. But I want to focus today on wall art prints because this niche is the easiest for generating art with AI.
If you are not sure what Print on Demand (POD) means, it is a business model where you partner with a supplier to customize and sell products like mugs, t-shirts, or, in this example, wall art. The supplier handles the printing, packaging, and shipping, so you don’t need to stock inventory. They take a small profit cut, and the rest is yours. It’s low-risk, beginner-friendly, and scalable.
4. Choosing a platform for your store
Where do you sell POD wall art? You can set up your store on different platforms, including Etsy, Shopify, Amazon Seller, TikTok Shop, and so on.
If you are just a beginner, probably starting on Etsy is the easiest and cheapest way to go. Running an Etsy store is free except for a tiny 20-cent fee per product listing. But if you use my link in the description, you can even list your first 40 products for free as well.
So if you start with Etsy, this is where you’ll publish your product listings and make them available for sale. Shopify is the next step I would take after Etsy because it requires a monthly subscription, although if you use my link in the description, you can pay only $1 for your store for the first 3 months.
Etsy has its customer base—millions of people search on this platform. So if you learn about SEO on Etsy, you can get a lot of free traffic inside of this platform. So even if you’re thinking about creating your own Shopify store later, Etsy is a perfect place to get started. It allows you to make sales without the hassle of managing a website, and you will learn a lot about which products are the winners, and then you can sell them on your Shopify store.
5. Connecting Your Store to a POD Platform
Connect Your Store to a Print-on-Demand Platform
Whether you choose Etsy, Shopify, or another platform to host your store, once it’s live, you can connect it to a print-on-demand platform that will handle your product printing and shipping.
I’ve been using Gelato, and it has a free plan! How does it work? You will only pay for printing and shipping once the item is purchased in your store. Your customer pays you more than you paid to Gelato. Profit margins range from 20 to 50%, depending on niche and product type.
By the way, Gelato easily integrates with Etsy stores, Shopify, TikTok Shop, Amazon Seller, or a store built on WordPress or another website-building platform. You can offer a wide range of products, including T-shirts, mugs, posters, tote bags, phone cases, calendars, and so on. But we are focusing on wall art today, and actually, all paper products on Gelato have excellent quality!
They recently added a new product in the Wall Art category called Fine Art, in which they use advanced 12-color fine art printing technology. It gives you vivid, accurate colors surpassing standard 4-color inkjet. Gelato gets 4.7 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot, so it’s not just my great experience, but a lot of people also like the platform. You can use my link in the description below, gelato.com/anastasia, to get 50% off your first order and experience the products firsthand! Thank you, Gelato, for sponsoring this part of the blog, and the next step is…
6. Creating wall art designs with AI.
Creating wall art used to require graphic design skills, but thanks to AI tools, anyone can step into this business, even without prior experience!
I’ve worked with several AI tools, including MidJourney, Leonardo AI, and Freepik, to create abstract wall art. Out of all of them, I found Freepik to be the fastest and most budget-friendly option.
Here are some abstract art images Freepik generated for me. First, I type in a simple text prompt, like an abstract painting with vibrant colors, including pink, green, and so on…
Next, I select the image ratio we need—it’s 3:4 in this case. Freepik also offers several modes to experiment with; they’ve introduced some new beta modes, but I’ll stick with Flux Fast, which has consistently worked well for these types of images.
In just a few seconds, I get two generated images. I can use both or choose one to save in my collection of AI-generated wall art. AI-generated images are usually smaller by default—probably to speed up the generation process. But for printing, we need high resolution images.
With Freepik, I can easily get 4K upscale. I just need to ensure the Imagination setting is set to None so the AI doesn’t change anything in the image—just the resolution. And that’s it! The result is a high-quality image, perfect for printing wall art.
All you have to do next is upload this design to the Gelato product and then publish it on Etsy, Shopify, or another platform you decided to use for hosting your store.
7. The Order Fulfillment Process
Once a customer places an order, your store collects their address and payment, and this information is automatically sent to your Gelato account. Gelato takes care of printing your design on the product and shipping it directly to the customer. All you have to do is approve the order, and Gelato handles the rest.
It’s a seamless process that allows you to scale your shop as much as you want. And this makes this business model as close as possible to the “passive income” we all dream about.
8. Marketing your POD products.
The key to selling your products is getting them in front of the right people—those who will connect with your design and feel compelled to buy.
Paid Advertising
Paid ads are straightforward—you pay to promote your products to make sure they show up in front of shoppers. For example, you can set a daily ad budget on Etsy to push your listings higher in search results. Or you could run ads on platforms like Pinterest or Facebook and drive traffic to your Shopify store. While paid ads can be effective, they can also be costly and may not sell your products. That’s why I lean toward organic strategies.
Organic Traffic (Free and Powerful)
Instead of spending money on ads, you can focus on creating more products optimized with the right keywords. If you are on Etsy, SEO is very powerful on this platform. The more optimized listings you create, the higher your chances of landing on the first page of search results on Etsy without spending a cent on ads.
You can also use Pinterest as a free traffic source—this platform works as a visual search engine, and if we talk about wall art products specifically, it’s the perfect fit. Art and home decor are some of the biggest niches on Pinterest.
But it’s important to understand that organic traffic takes more time and effort than running ads. You’ll need to post a variety of designs and keep experimenting until some listings perform well.
