At 3 AM, Alston Godbolt watched a YouTube video claiming people were pulling in over $300,000 a year selling digital planners online. By morning he had already generated 25 to 30 images with zero design background, no expensive software training, and no prior Etsy experience. His takeaway: the method worked, but it had two friction points that would stop most people before they ever listed a single file. So he built a version designed to remove those barriers entirely.
This post breaks down the original AI digital pattern side hustle, shows you exactly how the MidJourney generation process works, explains where to sell what you create, and covers what Alston changed to make the whole process faster and more accessible. If you have been looking for a repeatable way to put digital products online without being a designer or a marketer, this is one of the clearest entry points available in 2023.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- A clear picture of how the AI digital pattern side hustle actually works
- How to use ChatGPT to generate a fresh list of sellable pattern ideas in under two minutes
- The exact MidJourney command that creates tileable, commercially usable patterns
- Which platforms to sell on and how real sellers are pricing their work right now
- The two barriers in the original method that most people never clear
- What a PLR Repository is and whether it makes sense for your situation
- Honest drawbacks so you can decide before you spend a dollar
- Your best starting point in under two minutes at finder.platformproof.com
The Original Method: Selling AI-Generated Digital Patterns
The video Alston watched at 3 AM had a simple thesis: AI image generation has made it possible for people with zero design skill to create and sell digital patterns at scale. The original creator was pointing at a real market. Platforms like Etsy and Creative Market have buyers actively searching for seamless digital patterns they can use for print-on-demand products, scrapbooking, digital wall art, and commercial design projects.
The original workflow looked like this: pick a pattern theme, feed it into MidJourney, download the output, list it for sale. That is a genuinely short loop. Alston noticed, though, that the original video glossed over two walls that most people hit and never get past. One, not everyone has a design intuition that tells them what to type into an AI image generator. Two, MidJourney requires a paid subscription. Both of those stop a large percentage of viewers before they finish their first session.
Alston’s video is structured as a response to those two gaps. He walks through the original method step by step, names the specific friction points, and then shows what he built to solve them. The result is a more complete picture of the side hustle than the original video offered.
Step 1: Find Your Digital Pattern Idea
Before you open MidJourney, you need to know what pattern to create. This is where most people with no design background get stuck. The blank prompt field is intimidating when you are not a designer. Alston found two reliable methods that remove that wall.
The first method is ChatGPT. He opened a chat and typed “digital pattern ideas.” ChatGPT returned ten different concepts he could work with immediately. No guessing, no Pinterest deep dives, no time spent staring at the ceiling. For someone who has no starting point, that single prompt is enough to get you past the first wall and into the generation step.
The second method is to look at what is already selling on Etsy. Alston is not suggesting copying other sellers. He is suggesting using existing top listings as a signal for what buyers want right now, then putting your own spin on it. For example, if “groovy retro designs” is appearing in Etsy search results and performing well, you might type “hippie floral” or “vintage geometric” into MidJourney to fill an adjacent slot in the same category. If spring floral is saturated, try fall floral or winter botanical. The gap is usually one season or one adjective away.
By combining both methods, you can build a working list of 20 to 30 pattern ideas without any design background. That list gives you enough direction to run a productive first MidJourney session without wasting time wondering what to create.
Step 2: Generate Patterns Inside MidJourney
Once you have your idea list, the generation step is faster than most people expect. MidJourney operates inside Discord. You access it through a paid subscription, which ran around $10 per month for the basic tier when billed monthly at the time this video was recorded.
The command that makes this side hustle work is the slash imagine command with a specific flag added at the end. Here is what it looks like in practice for a summer floral pattern:
/imagine summer floral patterns –tile
The –tile flag is the piece most people miss. It tells MidJourney to generate a seamless, repeating pattern rather than a standalone image. That distinction matters commercially. A seamless tile can be applied to fabric, digital paper, a phone case, or a print-on-demand product and repeat without any visible seam. Without the tile flag, you get an illustration. With it, you get a commercial pattern asset.
After you submit the command, MidJourney generates four variations in roughly a minute. You browse them, click the one that looks cleanest, inspect it for blemishes or visual errors, and download the high-resolution file. Alston spent one morning using this exact process and generated 25 to 30 pattern images before most people had finished breakfast. He noted that he has no eye for design and found the process straightforward.
The output is an image file you own. You can list it as a digital download on Etsy, bundle it with other patterns, or license it for commercial use. The marginal cost of each additional pattern you generate is essentially zero beyond your monthly subscription fee. That is the part of this model that makes it interesting at scale.
Step 3: Where to Sell Your Digital Patterns
The original video focused on Etsy and Creative Market. Alston confirmed both are real opportunities and added a few others worth knowing about depending on where you are in the process.
Etsy is the highest-traffic marketplace for digital downloads. Buyers come looking specifically for patterns to use in craft and design projects. Setup requires an Etsy seller account, listing fees, and transaction fees, but the buyer intent is already there. You do not need to convince anyone that digital patterns exist or explain what they are for. The search volume is real and active.
Creative Market attracts designers and developers who need assets for client work. The buyer on Creative Market is often a professional willing to pay more per download because they are going to use the pattern commercially across multiple projects. Pricing can be meaningfully higher here than on Etsy, though the approval process to become a seller takes more time.
Facebook Groups work well if you build a small audience in a niche community. A seller who posts a bundle of 30 floral patterns inside a digital crafting group can make sales without paying any platform fees. It requires more upfront relationship-building than a marketplace listing, but the margin on each sale is higher because there is no middleman taking a cut.
Pinterest ads are Alston’s pick for a paid traffic strategy. Digital products are inherently visual, which is a natural fit for Pinterest’s format. A promoted pin showing a sample of your patterns, linked to your Etsy shop or your own storefront, can drive consistent traffic at a lower cost per click than most other paid platforms because the audience already has purchase intent around visual and creative products.
You can also sell directly through your own website or through platforms like Gumroad or Payhip, which cut out marketplace fees once you have any kind of audience sending traffic to you. Selling directly gives you the customer relationship and the full margin, which matters more as volume grows.
What Sells and What It Pays on Etsy Right Now
Alston pulled up Etsy during the video to show real live listings. Here is what the market looked like based on what he found while recording.
Single patterns were selling for as low as $1.19 per download. That sounds small, but digital downloads have zero cost of goods after the first sale. If you list 50 patterns and each one sells 10 times a month at $1.19, you are looking at $595 per month from patterns you generated in a single morning. The real volume is in bundles, though. One listing Alston showed contained 5,000 designs and was selling for $86. A buyer who wants variety pays once and gets a massive library of commercial-use files.
The use cases he found on Etsy were wider than most people expect going into this. Buyers were using digital patterns for:
- Glitter printable patterns and decorative digital paper
- Scrapbook paper and journaling supplies
- Commercial use fabric and print-on-demand clothing
- Digital wall art sold as printable downloads
- SVG files for Cricut and Silhouette cutting machines
- Gold foil and alcohol ink designs for stationery products
- Watercolor patterns for commercial product packaging
A single pattern file can legitimately serve buyers across six or seven different product categories. That breadth is part of why the market is as active as it is. The original video’s $307,000 figure came from the creator Alston watched, not from Alston himself. He does not claim that number as his own result. But the market signals he found while researching confirm there is real volume here for sellers who build a meaningful catalog and learn the platform.
The Two Barriers Most People Never Clear
Alston’s main contribution in this video is not the method itself. The original creator laid out the method. Alston’s value is naming the two walls most people hit and never get past, then showing what he built to solve them.
Barrier One: Not knowing what to type. MidJourney requires a text prompt. If you have no design background, a blank prompt field is paralyzing. What theme? What style? What mood? That blank is where most people close the tab and move on. The ChatGPT fix Alston shows is genuinely simple. Type “digital pattern ideas” into ChatGPT and work from whatever it gives you. That one move removes the blank-page problem entirely.
Barrier Two: The subscription cost before any income. MidJourney removed its free tier. To use the version that generates commercial-quality, high-resolution output, you need a paid subscription. At $10 per month billed monthly, it is a low barrier in dollar terms. But for someone who is not yet sure this will work, spending $10 before making a single sale feels like a commitment. Alston does not pretend the cost does not exist. He names it directly and then explains what he built for people who want to skip it entirely.
Together, these two barriers create a gap between “watched the video” and “listed the first product.” The PLR Repository is what Alston put in that gap.
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Alston’s Twist: The PLR Repository
By the time he made this video, Alston had already spent 30 minutes to an hour inside MidJourney generating digital patterns. He had 35 files ready to go. His solution to both barriers was to build a product library that removed the need for subscribers to generate anything themselves.
He calls it the PLR Repository. PLR stands for private label rights. When you purchase PLR content, you receive the right to download it, rebrand it, and resell it as your own product. You are not buying a personal use license. You are buying a commercial resale license. That distinction is what makes PLR useful as a side hustle starting point rather than just a content shortcut.
At the time of the video, the PLR Repository contained the following:
- 35+ digital pattern files across multiple themes (with new ones added each month)
- Done-for-you digital planners available to download and resell immediately
- Adult coloring books
- Advertising and bullet scripts
- Ebook bundles
- Headline bundles
- Valentine’s Day SVG files and seasonal content added throughout the year
The price at the time of recording was $110, paid once. You pay that amount once and receive access to everything in the library plus lifetime updates. Alston said he was adding three to five new digital products every month. Members who join can return the following month and download the new additions without any additional charge.
For someone who wants to start selling digital products this week and has no interest in MidJourney, prompt writing, or design decisions, the PLR Repository removes every step between thinking about it and having products ready to list. You pay, you download, you list. The creative work is already done.
Alston also mentioned an interactive element: if you comment a digital pattern idea on the video, he will add that theme as a new file to the repository. That is a semi-custom layer on top of the PLR model, which distinguishes it from a static library that never changes.
Honest Drawbacks
This side hustle has real appeal. It also has real problems. Both deserve a clear look before you spend money or time on it.
Competition on Etsy is high and getting higher. The fact that this method is accessible to anyone with a MidJourney subscription means thousands of sellers have already started. Listing a pattern on Etsy does not guarantee anyone will find it. SEO, tags, listing titles, thumbnail quality, and review count all determine whether your listing appears in search results. You are not just competing on product quality. You are competing on discoverability in a crowded marketplace.
PLR content is not unique by definition. If you purchase the PLR Repository and list those patterns on Etsy, other buyers of the same library are listing the same patterns. On a platform where identical listings from multiple sellers compete directly, that overlap can hurt all of them. Buyers comparing two identical products tend to pick the one with more reviews, which disadvantages newer sellers. You would need to modify the files, bundle them differently, or sell through channels where the overlap is less visible.
MidJourney’s commercial use terms require attention. Before you sell AI-generated images commercially, you need to read MidJourney’s current terms of service. The rules around commercial use rights, and which subscription tier grants them, have changed more than once since 2023. What was permitted for basic subscribers at the time of this video may have different conditions now. Verify before you list.
Income scales with volume and marketing, not just creation. The $307,000 figure in the original video Alston references is a claimed outlier, not a typical result. Building meaningful monthly income from digital patterns requires a consistent catalog of products, strong Etsy listings, and a traffic strategy that brings buyers to your shop. It is a real business that rewards people who treat it like one. It is not a passive income machine that runs without attention.
The $110 PLR cost is money out before money in. If you are buying the PLR Repository to skip the MidJourney generation step, make sure you have a clear plan for where you will sell and how you will drive traffic. Purchasing a library of files and then discovering you do not know how to build an Etsy shop or write a compelling listing means you are $110 in the hole without a clear path forward.
Who This Side Hustle Actually Fits
The digital pattern method is a strong match for someone who enjoys creating visual content, has patience for the learning curve on Etsy, and is willing to generate a large enough volume of patterns to build a real catalog. Ten listings do not produce meaningful Etsy income. A hundred listings covering multiple themes gives you real surface area in search results and a higher chance that buyers find you.
It is also a reasonable starting point for someone who already has a small audience in a design-adjacent niche. A blogger who writes about home decor, a crafter who posts on Instagram, or a teacher who sells printable worksheets already has people who might buy a pattern bundle. For those sellers, the distribution problem is partially solved before they ever open Etsy.
It is a harder fit for someone starting with no audience, no tolerance for Etsy’s learning curve, and an expectation of fast income. The method is real. The money takes consistency and iteration to build. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something that does not exist.
Find Your X
Digital patterns are one of dozens of ways to build an online income stream. Whether this one fits your situation depends on your skills, your schedule, and what you are actually willing to spend your time doing. The fastest way to find your specific best starting point is the Platform Proof Finder. It takes less than two minutes and matches you to the online income model that fits your actual circumstances, not a generic recommendation built for everyone.
Visit finder.platformproof.com to get your result today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need any design experience to create and sell digital patterns?
No. Alston says in the video that he has no eye for design and generated 25 to 30 patterns in a single morning. ChatGPT gives you the theme ideas. MidJourney does the visual work from a text prompt. Your job is to look at the four options the AI produces and pick the one that looks best. That requires taste, not technical design skill. The process is accessible to someone who has never opened Photoshop or Illustrator.
How much does MidJourney cost and do I need a paid plan?
At the time of this video, the basic paid plan was around $10 per month when billed monthly, with lower rates available on annual billing. MidJourney removed its free trial tier, so yes, you need a paid subscription to generate images. The exact pricing may have changed since this video was recorded. Check midjourney.com for current plan rates before signing up. Also verify which plan tier grants commercial use rights, since that affects whether you can legally sell what you generate.
What does the –tile flag do in MidJourney and why does it matter?
The –tile flag instructs MidJourney to generate a seamless, repeating pattern. When a buyer downloads a tile pattern and applies it to fabric, digital paper, or a print-on-demand product, the pattern repeats across the surface without visible seams or breaks. Without the tile flag, MidJourney generates a standalone illustration that cannot repeat cleanly. That distinction is the difference between a personal art piece and a commercially usable pattern asset. For this side hustle, the tile flag is not optional.
Where is the best platform to start selling digital patterns?
Etsy is the most practical starting point for most sellers. It has high traffic, built-in buyer intent for digital downloads, and a straightforward shop setup process. Creative Market is a good second step once you have a catalog built, since buyers there often pay more per file. If you already have an audience somewhere, selling direct through Gumroad or your own website cuts out marketplace fees and gives you the customer relationship. Pinterest ads work well to drive traffic to Etsy listings because the platform is visual and the audience skews toward craft and design.
What is private label rights content and how does it differ from regular digital products?
PLR stands for private label rights. When you purchase a PLR product, you receive a license to resell it under your own brand or name. A standard digital product purchase gives you a personal use license, meaning you can use the file yourself but cannot sell it to others. PLR specifically grants commercial resale rights, which is what makes Alston’s PLR Repository useful as a side hustle starting point. You buy it once, download the files, and can immediately list them for sale on Etsy, Creative Market, or anywhere else that accepts digital products.
Is there a risk of competing with other people who bought the same PLR library?
Yes, that is a real consideration worth thinking through before you purchase. When multiple buyers have access to the same PLR files, some of them will list identical products on Etsy. On a competitive marketplace, duplicate listings from different sellers tend to suppress each other in search results, and buyers usually pick the listing with more reviews. Ways to reduce this: modify the patterns before listing, bundle them in unique combinations different from what other sellers are doing, or sell through channels where the overlap is less visible, such as your own website or a niche Facebook community.
Can you realistically make significant income selling digital patterns?
People are making real money selling digital patterns on Etsy and Creative Market. The income potential is not theoretical. The realistic picture, though, is that building meaningful monthly income requires a catalog of multiple patterns across several themes, strong Etsy SEO on each listing, and a way to drive traffic beyond organic search alone. The $307,000 figure referenced in the original video Alston watched is an outlier result, not a typical starting point. Most sellers who succeed at this build income incrementally over months, not weeks, by consistently adding products and improving their listings.
Does MidJourney allow commercial use of images you generate with a paid subscription?
MidJourney’s commercial use terms have evolved since 2023. At the time of this video, paid subscribers generally had commercial use rights for images they generated. However, those terms changed multiple times between 2022 and 2024, and the specific rights tied to each subscription tier varied. Before you list and sell anything generated with MidJourney, read the current terms of service on midjourney.com and confirm what your specific plan tier allows. Do not rely on what was true in 2023 without verifying the current rules.
Read Next
If creating and selling AI-generated patterns sounds like a strong fit but you want to understand the full picture of building digital products with AI tools before you commit to a platform or a purchase, this next post walks through the complete process from idea to listed product.
Read: How To Create Digital Products Using AI (Step By Step Tutorial)
Sources
- Alston Godbolt, “The Actual Easiest AI Side Hustle of 2023 $307K+ | Made Even Easier”: YouTube, alstongodbolt.com
- MidJourney image generation platform and subscription tiers: midjourney.com
- Etsy digital downloads marketplace: etsy.com
- Creative Market digital asset marketplace: creativemarket.com
- PLR Repository product library: referenced via alstongodbolt.com video description
Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.