Poking Around E-Commerce In The Age Of Generative Art

Right now, if you setup a Zazzle which only needs username and password, and generate a neat image with Midjourney limited but free, you can have a neat product for sale.

A notebook, with a pretty watercolor kitten cover.

With nothing more than username and a password, zero cost, you can take an image from midjourney and have a product for sale on zazzle.

I ran some tests, and only received 10 or 15 views, in a month, no one bought anything, but I haven't really started uploading yet.

One store mentioned on Zazzle’s spotlight has a 1,000 products, I have 16 astronaut cat magnets, and to be frank, a frightening Easter pillow.

And I set the prices way too high, but I just wanted to see the workflow.

You need to get your own impression, you don't have to use zazzle, just search for selling art online.

I chose zazzle at random, because I want to try many such platforms.

I am looking for one with good automation, so that I can create a few hundred quality products in a day or two.

If yo are young, still in High School, there is some discomfort here when learning new things, but it is nothing big.

In just a day, with your platform of choice, you can go to sleep dreaming that people will buy your strange $100 pillows.

Here, you get a new thing for your resume, you now have a need for a product portfolio, which is awesome.

And eventually, after you make your prices more reasonable, and make some pillows that don’t frighten the bajezus out of grandmas everywhere…

You’ll make that first sale, and a second an fifth, and you’ll start developing a new talent, passive income, online sales.

Programming, automating uploads, setting up your own e-commerce platform, learning graphic design to fix up badly generated images, and so on.

Once you see the stuff works, you won’t even notice how many new talents you've gained.

Learned talents are really the only difference between selling a few, and selling a few thousand.

All the new things you learn, will help you navigate towards eventual success.

And that you can take a step back from product sales, and sell graphic packs for people who do want to deal with e-commerce.

For a much larger price, you could offer AI generated artwork, for a 100 products, that can be setup at zazzle.

Artificially generated art, is non deterministic, it means it is very easy to create unique artwork for a 100 products.

Find an active store, create 10 or 100 images similar to what they have, and ask if they are interested in purchasing that.

When selling Pillows and Coffee Mugs, people have a “meh” attitude, they’ve see it all, they browsed a hundred products before they go to you.

But when you contact a store owner, with ready made art, which may only take you a day, you will certainly not get a “meh” reaction.

Artificially generated art, is very beautiful, very powerful.

And the promise of a 100 such works, that fit their existing product line, that can save that store owner a lot of time time.

Will make it hard, to mark your email as spam.

There is a real chance, that you are not going to make very much money, but you will make enough to gain invaluable experience, and do better.

AI generated images changed art, and by extension changed product creation as well, this is a wonderful and rewarding gateway towards some interesting new paths and talents.