Make Money with Midjourney T-Shirt Design + ChatGPT – Monetizing AI

Print-On-Demand – An Absolute Goldmine for Anyone Who Knows How to Make Money Online

Midjourney is an absolute goldmine for anyone who knows how tomonetize it, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to use Midjourney to create print-on-demand and merge products that you can sell on sites like Amazon, Redbubble, T-Public, Spreadshirt, and many more. You see, the beauty of printon-demand is that it's one of the few online models that allows you to build a passive income stream. Now, that doesn't mean that you won't have to put in the work in order to build and maintain that income stream. However, it's a simple and straightforward model that is relatively easy to manage without having to worry about operational details. And I should know, because I started with printon-demand in 2008; long before most of you even had a clue.

Organic Print-On-Demand Sales – 15 Years Ago

That's right, 15 years ago. You have absolutely no idea how old I feel right now. Anyway, today, I'll give you a broad overview of the basic process of organic print-on-demand sales: how to research a niche, how to ask ChatGPT for ideas, how to create design elements in Midjourney, how to edit them in a shirt design, simple prompts that produce good results, and the three most common mistakes that all newbies make. You'll definitely want to stick around for that very last part. Alright. So let's not waste any more time and kick things off. Anyone who's currently in the Merge game knows how much of a game changer Midjourney and other AI art generators are. And to be honest, I wouldn't even be surprised if we see some AI merge design generators popping up within the next 12 months.

But until then, Midjourney can already massively improve your workflow. You see, the vast majority of best-selling designs are nothing more than a really good, high-quality illustration, combined with some topography. And thanks to Midjourney, literally, anyone can create these high-quality illustrations straight from the desktop in a matter of minutes. And what's even better is you have so much control over the final image and you can spin up some of the wildest concepts just for fun. Midjourney allows you to cut down on production time and production cost. It basically levels the playing field for everyone, because just until recently hiring an illustrator is something that only a few people could afford, but now literally anyone can do it. So let the games begin.

Is Midjourney Going to Kill ThreadBasket?

I know what some of you might be thinking right now, but what about all those poor illustrators whose jobs are going to be lost? Well, they will have to adapt, just like any other business has to adapt all the time. Listen, I actually run a stock illustration platform called ThreadBasket. Threadbasket is completely optimized for merch and printon demand. Is Midjourney going to kill that business? That's actually very possible.

So do you see me sitting in the corner crying to myself, complaining how unfair the world is? No, I adapt or I die. So if you feel like you might be affected by this, then get your act together, roll up your sleeves and do something about it. So there's about a million different videos out there dedicated to printon demand and market.

How to Start a YouTube Business Model

That's why I really don't want to waste too much time explaining it all over again. There are many of really great YouTubers out there who cover all of this in much more detail than I can be able to do right here, and to be honest, they even do it in many different languages. However, I do want to give some of the newbies among you a quick overview of how this business model roughly works. So you start researching across various niches, or niches, or whatever you want to call it. You decide on how you want to pronounce it. Anyway, a niche might be culture, live action, roleplaying, pickleball, or even crocheting.

How to Get Started With Print on Demand

Does that sound a little too specific? Well yeah, that's kind of the point, if you try to go for the most obvious niches out there, then you're going to have a really rough time. There's just way too much competition. So instead, you want to focus on niches that people are really passionate about and that are not too mainstream, and most importantly, make sure people are actually searching for this stuff because otherwise it's pointless. Nesting down too far is literally a thing. Generating ideas is probably the easiest part. You can simply search the web for funny or other popular quotes. You can also try to dive really deep into forums that are specific to that niche and try to figure out what resonates with that audience. Or, in 2023, you can just ask ChatGPT.

That's right. ChatGPT will actually be able to help you with some of those ideas, and I'm going to show you how to do that little later in this video. Now, I think this part is pretty much a nobrainer. You take your idea and you just bring it to life. In our particular case, we're going to take the quote that we choose, and we're going to try to combine it with really nice illustration, and that illustration will come from–that's right–middle journey. However, although Mid Journey can help you get those really nice, high-quality illustrations, you're still going to have to learn how to use an image editor. Once again, this is not something I want to cover in this video, because there are far more than enough videos out there on YouTube that explain exactly how to use them. There are many channels out there that are much better at teaching those skills than I am. The final step is to upload your designs to one of the many marketplaces out there that already have organic traffic.

Why is this important? Well, unless you're willing to spend money to run ads in order to send people to your store or you have some other way of reaching people, no one's going to find your product. Marketplaces such as Amazon have more than enough traffic. I don't think I need to explain that to you. The only thing you then need to do is you need to make sure that your listing is optimized in a way that makes it really easy for people to find that very specific design that you created. And even though this might surprise you, it is still one of the biggest challenges that people face when they get started with print on demand. Since not every niche is the same, it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't. Now, I usually don't advertise any product during my videos, but today is a little of an exception. Here's my shameless plug.

Remember how I told you that I've been in this print on demand business for quite some time already? Well, I actually have a marketing and strategy report that I publish on a weekly basis. It's called the Hydorn reports, and if you're keen on getting started with merch and print on demand, then it's definitely worth checking out. It does come with a free sample report so you can have a look through all of the pages and all of the content before you decide whether it makes sense for you or not. Alright, so I'm sure you're anxious to finally start creating some designs in mid-journey. So let's get right to it. I'm going to skip the research part and go straight to idea generation. The main idea of this video is to show you what sort of prompts work relatively well for craft designs and that make it quite easy to edit them afterwards. So let's start with the dinosaur niche.

10 Funny T-Shirt Quotes

I personally know that there's a fairly big market for shirt designs, with t-shirts doing all sorts of weird, strange, and fun things. So I open up ChatGPT and I simply enter. I need 10 funny shirt quotes. For people who like trexes and enjoy playing guitar, then ChatGPT does what it does best and gives me a list of 10 quotes, and I'm going to be very honest with you here. I was pretty surprised at how funny and how good some of these quotes really were. I'm going to pick RoarmeansPlayMearrif in tx, because shorter quotes tend to be much easier to implement within a shirt design.

Shirt Design on White Background, Txx Playing the Guitar, and Flat Illustration Style

Now I still need a really cool illustration that goes with it. So let's open disc and enter the following prompt in Midjourney: Imagine shirt design on white background, txx playing the guitar, flat illustration style, and an aspect ratio of 4 to 5. The reason why I'm using an aspect ratio of 4 to 5 is because this ratio is relatively close to the typical dimensions that you would use for shirt design on Merge by Amazon. I'm going to give me a type of design that is easier to fit into those particular dimensions. And what do you know? These are really nice.

So the only problem I see here with these designs is that the splashes of color in the background and the borders of the design might make it relatively difficult to cut it out, and that's why I'm going to try something slightly different. Imagine sticker design on white background txx playing the guitar flat. illustration style ratio of 4 to 5. I only changed the word shirt to sticker, and I did this because stickers tend to be displayed with fat white borders around them. This actually makes it much easier to remove the background. So let me show you how I would create this design.

How to Upscale an Image

First, I'd elevate the image. Once it's upgraded, I'll copy the URL. Then I'll open a new tab and go to www.upscalemedia. They actually provide a free upscaling service that is more or less good enough for what we're trying to do here, and the best part is that they don't add any watermarks. So you click on paste URL and then you paste your URL, and after about 10 to 20 seconds you'll see your first result. I then usually turn on enhance quality and I increase the upgrade factor from 2 to whatever it will allow me to do. Sometimes this will fail because the image becomes just too big for the free version, and in those cases I just stick to the regular upgraded version that they give me. Then I download the image and I open it up in a image editor.

Affinity Designer – How to Add a Quote to Your Shirt

I personally like to work with Affinity Designer simply because I'm not a fan of the Adobe subscription model. Next, I'll eliminate all of the unnecessary background and I'll fast forward for this part, because it's going to take a bit of a while. Once the illustration is ready, we can start to add the text. You may have noticed that I added a black background layer behind the illustration. The reason I did this is because 80% of theshirts sold on Amazon literally have a black or dark navy blue color. So my text is going to have to be white, and in order to read it I need to have a dark background in order to see it.

So there are many different ways how you can do this and how you can place your text. However, I generally recommend to make it as big as possible. People who buyshirts with quotes they want other people to be able to read and see them from far away. I'll fast forward this part one more time, and you can just watch me while I'm doing it.

How to Deactivate the Black Background and Export the Design As a PNG

Alright, we now have a shirt design that actually looks pretty decent. We can now deactivate the black background and export the design as a transparent PNG. Now all you need to do is upload your design to a platform of your choice, create a listing, optimize that listing, and wait for the sales to eventually come in. So let's get back to the original prompt that I used. I decided to use the sticker keyword because the generated image was easier to edit, but that's not always the case. So take a look at this example for a firefighter design. Imagine shirt design on white background.

firefighter design, flat illustration style, aspect ratio of 4 to 5. I kept this prompt very simple, and if we now look at the images, you'll see that they are pretty awesome. The fact that most of them are on a dark or black background is probably due to the firefighter theme. That makes cutting out the background a little trickier than usual. But just have a look at what I turned the bottom right design into. That's actually pretty neat, isn't it? And trust me, these are exactly the type of designs that sell within this niche.

Now things took a very interesting turn when I made these slight changes to the prompt. Notice how I removed any mention of the word shirt design and also strictly said that I do not want to see mockups. Well, it turns out, this produces a really interesting flat design style. You rarely see this type of style in print, on demand and cash, but I can totally see this selling pretty well. Let's quickly walk through some more examples. Imagine design on clear background. Anular design.

How to Use Mid-Journey to Create Really Nice Shirt Designs

Flat illustration style. No mockup (AR 4) to (5). In this example, I tried to create something that we could use for a fishing shirt. I've used the word "angular", which is a common term within the fishing niche, and these images are a really great starting point for a shirt design. If you wanted to focus more on a very particular fish, then you could use this prompt (sea bass design on white background). full color vector illustration. Flat, comic style. By the way, you don't necessarily need to use the same style that I'm using right here. I just personally find them quite useful specifically for shirt designs. So make sure you experiment with different styles, not just those that I show you here, until you find exactly what you're looking for.

And, as you can imagine, this whole process works with other objects as well. So let's say you wanted to create a shirt design for people who enjoy sailing. Well, then you could use something like this, very detailed icon of an anchor on white background. rope and shells; Vector illustration. Flat, comic style. This gives us some really beautiful illustrations of anchors that you can cut out and then either use as is, without any text, or you add some type of quote that fits the niche. So by now, you should have a fairly good idea of how you can use mid-journey to create really nice shirt designs. In most cases, all you really need to do is create a design element that fits the theme and then combine it with some aesthetic topography.

Print on Demand – 3 Of The Most Common Mistakes That People Make When They Get Started With Print on Demand

Now, for the final chapter of this video, let me quickly share with you three of the most common mistakes that people make when they get started with print on demand. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they get started with print on demand is just the general way that they approach things. If you've experimented with sellingshirts before, then some of these things are going to sound very familiar to you. While it might seem intuitive to believe that whatever you find appealing, others will find appealing, as well, this is probably the easiest way to fail. Graphic designers and illustrators are actually most at risk here because they are literally in it for the art. They incorrectly assume that the general public knows what's artistic and what is not. They also assume that the customer wants to buy something that's artistic. Well, I hate to tell you, but they don't, the vast majority of people literally have no taste at all. They also don't really care about how artsy a design is.

How to Monetize Mid Journey – Part 2

They simply buy stuff that they are passionate about. They also buy stuff that shows the entire world who they are and what they stand for. Why else do you think that shirt(s) like this one or this one sell like hotcakes? So rule number one: Create for the customer, not for yourself. So you've created a design that you're pretty sure people are actually going to like. You know this because you did some research and you saw that similar type of designs are already available on marketplaces, and you can see that they are being sold. They even have a few reviews and a decent bestseller rank on Amazon. So it's pretty clear that they are being bought by some people. So you list your design on Amazon, but for some reason you just can't get any sales, even though your design apparently is so much better than all of the others. So why is that?

Well, it all comes down to eyeballs. That's right. If no one could find your design, then no one's going to buy it. Remember, if one out of 100 people who see your design actually end up buying it, that's an extremely good conversion rate for e-commerce. Make no mistake e-commerce is all about conversion. So make sure that enough people are actually searching for the product that you're trying to create, and also make sure that you optimize your listings in a way that makes it more likely that it will be found by the right people, not just any people. Okay, so you created 10 designs, and now you've been waiting for an entire week, but you still don't have any sales and you're starting to get a little frustrated. Seriously, Are you kidding me? Your expectations are just completely out of hook. If you want this to work with organic sales, you are going to have to create a lot more designs, and I mean hundreds, possibly thousands of designs–and you'll need to learn to accept that this is a long-term gain.

You can actually get a lot done in a couple of months. However, for this to turn into a meaningful source of income, it's usually going to take a couple of years, unless, of course, you know how to run ads, but that's definitely not something I necessarily recommend to beginners. If you'd like to learn more about how tomonetize Mid Journey, make sure you check out part 2 of this series. Once it goes live, you'll find it linked here in the corner of the screen, and as I publish new videos for this series, I'll be adding them to a dedicated playlist.

Conclusion

Midjourney is an absolute goldmine for anyone who knows how tomonetize it. You can create print-on-demand and merge products that you can sell on sites like Amazon, Redbubble, T-Public, Spreadshirt, and many more. The first step is to find a niche that people are passionate about. The second is to upload your designs to one of the many marketplaces out there. The third is to learn how to use an image editor, ChatGPT gives me a list of 10 funny shirt quotes. "I adapt or I die. So if you feel like you might be affected by this, then get your act together, roll up your sleeves and do something about it," he says.