Ask Lemmy

The secret trick to earning online is faking it. Before you promote anything online, have an army of fake accounts to generate buzz, engagement, comments, reviews, to defend you and stuff. It'll not be easy, but that's how the world works now.

Start small and see where it goes. Use AI to your advqntagr to appear human, respond and stuff.

A lot of youtubers, gurus, and even agencies depend on it. First you prop up your accounts, catch the eye of the algorithm, then you get recommended to other people. Once you get to the million mark, dumb people will just repeat what you're saying without a shred of self-reflection.

Call any criticism haters, call it a joke if you do something bad, keep saying what the followers want to hear and it's smooth sailing from there.

I made !flipping@lemmy.world for discussing this very thing. I wrote a beginners guide to eBay. I recently figured out that people on marketplace care more about PCs with a windowed case and rgb lights over system specs.

Porn. Do porn. The furry stuff sells especially well.

I've tried Etsy, with a few paintings, some 3d prints I've designed, even a coloring book I made, but alas, I've got a total of 2 views and no sales.

Unfortunately I think to be successful on Etsy you really need to market yourself. You need to make videos on Instagram, tiktok, youtube about your products. I know it sucks.

Use an AI coding tool to make an AI tool that just pulls from some other AI things and sell subscriptions to idiots.

Have you tried selling pictures of your butthole?

This may sound harsh, but the fact that you have to ask is already a barrier. Anyone in the arts making money from their art, is making money because they stand out. With so much easy access to programs that create, there is a surplus of artists and no enough consumers of art.

As for Etsy, they are going to start deprioritizing copycat pieces and getting behind more original content, because their website is flooded. Competition on that platform is about to get harder.

People famously say making money with 3D printing is hard. If you still want to try, then you’ll need to go around and try to solve for issues people haven’t thought to solve and go print those solutions.

If you want to do things like coloring books, your best bet may be to go around to daycares, doctor’s offices and other places children may get bored and ask them if they would want to buy from you. The problem you are facing there is that most little kids today just play on iPads.

With the current cost of living issues most people are having and cutting back on non-essential spending, you will really need to push the visibility of your work on social media.

Try and find a niche to exploit that's not over-saturated and be realistic with your pricing. If you identify a niche, maybe reach out to popular/highly visible members of that community and offer to do custom avatar/banner work.

Maybe after you raise the visibility of your work, offer a heavily discounted limited time promotion or something.

Also might be worth checking out some freelance art jobs

Just spitballing ideas here

What a lot of people have been doing...

Buy junk at garage sales and thrift stores, then re-sell it on eBay. Mark up shipping to make added bank.

Background in animation and design sounds perfect for creating assets for streamers/vtubers. There always seems to be some demand for logos, "stingers" (animations that play between changing scenes), looping videos for idle screens (when the streamer isn't on camera, such a "taking a break" scenes), and emotes. Take a look around vgen.co and see if those types of things might be up your alley.

Tshirt design? Like at Threadless, TeeTurtle, etc?

The competition may still be fierce there, but you can wear your creations around and put your qr code or @handle on the sleeve.

Boosting and advertising will be the way to get your stuff in front of eyeballs to begin with.

If you have 3d design experience, along with doing 3d print files you could also sell assets on sites like CG trader or Turbosquid. You could make smartmaterials/gltfs or other asset bundles and list them and maybe start getting a passive income. Also consider offering a commercial license option for your 3d prints, I understand that's usually where artists end up making more 3d print sales because people will justify the cost by thinking they will sell the prints, and often they don't.

OF account, if you are saavy, people have hordes of accounts to earn income from reddit, yes it involves evading reddits filters.(using various things like new devices, proxies, anti-detection browsers.)