My 3-Month Recap of Trying to Make Pocket Money with AI Art (A Realistic Review)
Since late last year, I’ve been doing a side hustle making goods by mixing Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. I started after seeing YouTube videos like “I made 3 million won a month,” and to start with the 3-month result: I made a total of 870,000 won. Before tax.
The revenue structure is simple. Post art on Instagram, take orders, send them to a printing company—done. There were three problems.
1. Copyright issues. You can never sell characters with faces. Eventually, you’ll get caught.
2. Ad costs. If you don’t spend, no one sees it. In the end, there’s nothing left.
3. Platform policies. If they suddenly ban sales of AI-generated content, you’re done.
So I’ve stopped for now. The people who actually make money were already people with design sense. AI is a tool, not a business.
Still, I learned a lot. How to write prompts, Photoshop retouching, print resolution, and so on. I recommend just doing it for fun.