A Call To Learn Programming; Or, A Quick Look At E-Commerce Platforms

I uploaded six more products to my test store, this time cutting out most of the image editing by using a template.

A template image shows the AI where white-space needs to be, in addition I included a detailed picture frame, and a seed character.

The seed character was just a failed piece of art, a chibi that needed some work.

I use the same prompt that created this chibi, and got back a series of beautifully framed little chibis.

I removed the background behind the painting frame, entirely, it is just transparent space.

Each of the works is named after a girls name, and comes with a neat AI generated poem about spring.

Product previews look odd, because the white of the poster is showing around the frame, but on a white wall, it will look fantastic.

It seems like a clunky idea, but the ornate frames add so much to the works, that the unframed works look plain now.

The AI is generating 1024x1024 sized images, and often already blurry, so I fix them, at the rate of one per 45 minuets or so.

They look very pretty, the store I am with encourages me to buy my own art, to get a good glimpse, nice try.

Part of getting the store ready to be seen by others, is sharing my products on social media.

This advertises their entire platform, and places ads for other products next to mine.

Every seller, is asked to bring in some advertising, this seems like a good idea, certainly an interesting dynamic.

My store also has a ranking, I started with -1, and got to 2, by having 10 products, and advertising them.

Rank level 4 probably includes 10 collections of products, to be proper this means having 30 products, in groups of three.

Three cat phone cases, three chibis, three superheroes, the groups are menat to create product groups though.

So it would be Chibi paper plates, chibi napkins, and maybe chibi invitations.

Manual art creation creation without knowing where one is headed, would be hard, it would take months to create 30-40 works.

And what you get in return, is popping up in a sidebar from time to time.

After months of work, reading that you have to bring in your own advertising, by means of social media, could quickly become soul crushing.

Selling AI generated art, requires putting AI products into many stores, from many different companies and following their rules.

Without AI this would be impossible, it would take too long.

With the help of AI, both for images and product descriptions, the process if fun and captivating.

But, the way to do it right, is to build your own platform.

Borrow the best ideas, fix all the problems that you see.

The biggest problem is that pretty products like mine are invisible, I will have to buy adds, and buy traffic for the store that does not care to advertise me.

The homage of an improved platform, would just scroll all the products.

Which brings me, to the final two points.

One, a competent prinshop that does apparel, canvas, maybe cups will have an API you can access.

It is an interface to which you send a text data object, describing what the customer bough and how they want it printed.

The print-shop would then ship to the customer, with your brand sticker and return address on the envelope.

Two, your own platform that helps people sell AI art, need not be confusing.

Just imagine WikiPedia, note how those link connect countless articles, and understand that one of those articles is the website menu, for example.

You don't look at the website menu by going to that article, you only go there to edit it, the website menu is automatically injected into top of evey web page.

If you think of your platform as, "everything is an article", you can map out all the flows by creating and nesting articles.

Your biggest problem will be security, so you prioritize it.

Give all your users roles, buyer, seller, admin, and put admin things under example.com/admin/, and seller stuff under example.com/seller/.

This first path, will check if the role matches, before printing any articles out.

Now, to get started ask your preferred AI the following: "Write a minimalist WikiWiki in node.js JavaScript."

It will take a long while to learn programming, and code your custom platform.

But given your experience with all the stores selling your products, you will create platform that you know will work.

In the platform you program, you set the rules.