You find a video. Someone pulls up a real Etsy shop with 230,000 sales, points at it, and tells you that all you need to do is create custom pet pictures and sell them through print on demand on Etsy or Redbubble to make $7 every minute on autopilot. Your brain starts doing the math before the video is even halfway through. $7 a minute. That is $420 an hour. That is more than most people make in a full day of work.
That is exactly the scenario this “I Tried It” series is built to address. I am Alston Godbolt, and I have been creating content online for close to 10 years. Before any of that worked for me, I was the person staying up late watching videos like this one, getting genuinely excited, spending months putting in the work, and then watching $0 roll in. I made these videos because I know how it feels to try a side hustle over and over and start thinking something is wrong with you when it does not produce the results the original creator promised.
In this post I am going to break down exactly what the original creator said to do, every reason why this specific method is likely to fail for most people who try it, and the real numbers from my actual Etsy shop after running it for nearly two years. Then I will give you a better path forward.
## What You’ll Walk Out With
– A complete picture of how the print on demand plus Etsy model actually works from the inside
– The specific upfront costs and fees the original video left out entirely
– Why Etsy SEO is the deciding factor and why most new sellers never address it
– The real math behind the $7 per minute claim stretched out to an annual number
– My actual Etsy results after nearly two years, 140+ active listings, and 46 total orders
– A clear explanation of why this model is not actually passive income
– A 5-step content path that builds real, durable online income
– A free quiz that tells you exactly which income stream fits your skills and schedule: [Take the Platform Proof Finder](https://finder.platformproof.com)
## What the Original Video Actually Claims
The pitch is simple. Start a print on demand shop. Use a service like Printify to connect products to your Etsy or Redbubble store. The specific angle the original creator adds is custom pet pictures. You grab a royalty-free stock photo of a pet from a free image website, put the owner’s pet name on top of it, and sell that design on mugs, iPhone cases, and similar products.
That is the whole method. There is no secret software, no proprietary tool, nothing patented. Print on demand combined with Etsy has been covered hundreds of times across YouTube and the rest of the internet. The custom pet niche is the one wrinkle the original creator adds to a very well-worn concept.
To give the claim some credibility, the original video points to a real shop called modp on Etsy. That shop has over 230,000 sales. When you look at one of their custom pet phone cases, the buying process is clear: you select your phone model, choose your case style, type in your pet’s name, and submit a photo of your pet to an email address. The shop creates a custom product and ships it.
That last part matters a lot. I will come back to it.
## Why This Side Hustle Probably Won’t Work the Way It Was Presented
### Print on Demand Is Not Free to Start
The original video either skipped or glossed over the fact that print on demand is not free to launch. When you set up a Printify account and connect it to an Etsy shop, you still have to fund the actual production of orders. When a customer buys from you, Printify does not wait for Etsy to pay you out before fulfilling the order. You need money already sitting in the account to cover the production cost.
In practice, this usually means putting money in around $100 at a time before any of your sales result in cash in your pocket. I ran into this personally when I tested selling T-shirts through Printify. I set up the listings, thought the money would flow from buyer through Etsy to me and then to Printify, and then got a notification that I needed to fund my account first. Before I had made a single dollar, I was spending money I had not planned to spend.
Factor in the listing fees on Etsy, which run around 20 to 40 cents per listing and apply every time you create or renew a listing, plus the transaction fee on every sale, and a new seller building out a shop with multiple listings could easily be $200 out of pocket before they see their first dollar back. That is not what “free to start” suggests.
### Etsy SEO Is a Skill and Most New Sellers Never Develop It
Hundreds, probably thousands, of new Etsy sellers are creating new shops and new listings every single day. If you want anyone to actually see your products, your listings need to appear in search results. That means understanding Etsy SEO: how to choose keywords, how to write titles and tags that match what buyers are actually searching for, and how the Etsy algorithm decides what to show first.
Most people who try Etsy for the first time create a batch of listings, upload them, and then wait to see orders appear. When nothing happens after a few weeks, they decide the model does not work. What actually happened is they skipped the part that makes the model work. Etsy SEO is not complicated, but it takes time to learn and more time to apply consistently. There are free resources on YouTube and in Etsy’s own help documentation, but getting genuinely good at it takes months of practice and testing.
The thing that trips up most people is a misconception about how these platforms function. Etsy works. Pinterest works. YouTube works. Every major platform works for people who take the time to understand how it actually distributes content or products. The mistake is treating any of them as a vending machine where you put listings in and money comes out.
### The Market Is Already Too Competitive for This Specific Angle
The original video about custom pet print on demand products was seen by tens of thousands of people. By the time most viewers are trying to act on it, there are already at least 50 to 100 Etsy listings attempting the exact same thing, all targeting the same search terms, all selling similar products.
When that many sellers compete on the same products in the same niche, something predictable happens to prices. Someone decides the only way to stand out is to price slightly lower. Then another seller undercuts that. Then another. Margins on a custom mug, for example, might start at $5 if the production cost is $5 and you charge $10. But once five competitors start listing at $9, then $8, then $7.50, your $10 listing gets skipped. You lower your price to compete. They lower theirs. The margin that made this seem worthwhile disappears.
The original creator also does not mention what it takes to genuinely differentiate a listing in a crowded market. That requires real design skill, a distinct brand identity, or a truly original product angle, not a niche that was trending six months before you tried to enter it.
### “Autopilot” Is Not Accurate for This Specific Model
Custom products break the passive income claim. Look at how the modp shop actually handles an order. The buyer picks their phone case, enters their pet’s name, and sends a photo by email. Someone on the other side of that transaction receives the email, creates or edits the design, and processes the order through the print on demand service. That is manual work on every single order.
You handle it yourself, which means your time is directly tied to every sale. Or you hire a virtual assistant to handle the customization work. A VA costs money, and that cost comes directly out of the already thin margins described above. Either way, this is not passive. The original creator’s claim that this runs on autopilot does not hold up when you look at how the custom order process actually works.
> **Not sure which online income path fits your situation?** The Platform Proof Finder takes about two minutes and tells you where to start based on your actual skills and schedule. [Take the free quiz here.](https://finder.platformproof.com)
## The Real Numbers: What I Made on Etsy After Nearly Two Years
I have run an Etsy shop for roughly a year and a half to two years. Here is the actual scorecard:
– Total shop visits: 13,000
– Total orders: 46
– Active listings: 140+
– Total revenue: $49
– Revenue in the 7 days before recording: $0
Those are real numbers from my real shop. I did sell items on Etsy. The sales I made came from tattoo designs I listed as digital downloads, which I have separate videos covering if you want that detail. The listings that followed the original creator’s print on demand pet niche advice generated no sales.
I want to be direct about something. If you have tried this method or something close to it and made no money, that is not evidence that something is wrong with you. That is what most people experience when they try to enter an oversaturated niche on Etsy without addressing SEO, without budgeting for fees, and without a plan for handling the custom work that the autopilot framing skips over. The structure of this specific opportunity is the problem, not the person attempting it.
## Breaking Down the $876,000 Annual Claim
Let’s follow the original video’s math to its logical conclusion. If you made $7 every minute for an hour, you would make $420. At the $240 per hour figure the original video uses, working 10 hours a day would produce $2,400 per day. Multiply $2,400 by 365 days and you land at $876,000 per year.
The original creator actually asks viewers to comment whether they think $876,000 a year is achievable with this method. Based on everything covered above, the honest answer is no, not with this specific method for a new seller starting today.
That is not because large online incomes are impossible. People build real businesses online that generate that and more. The problem is that this specific combination of custom print on demand products, on Etsy, in a niche that was publicized to tens of thousands of people at once, with thin margins, recurring fees, and manual fulfillment requirements, does not have the structure to produce that kind of income for a beginner. The math sounds good in a headline. The underlying business mechanics do not support it.
## What Actually Works Instead: A 5-Step Content Path
After years of trying different side hustles and finding out what actually generates consistent income, here is the approach I keep coming back to and recommending to the people I work with.
**Step 1: Pick one niche.**
Choose one topic you know enough about to answer questions on. It can be Microsoft Excel, dog training, Canva templates, home security cameras, budget cooking, or anything else you do regularly at work or in your personal life. The topic does not have to be in health, wealth, or relationships. Basket weaving is a niche. Excel macros is a niche. One topic, not three.
**Step 2: Choose one platform.**
YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and most large content platforms each get billions of visits every single month. You do not need to be everywhere at once. Pick the platform you already spend time on. If you are here reading this, you likely use YouTube. Start there. You already understand how the content on that platform works, which puts you ahead of someone starting from scratch.
**Step 3: Find 30 questions your target audience is already asking.**
Go to the search bar on your chosen platform and start typing questions in your niche. The autocomplete will show you real queries people are actively searching. Those are your content topics. Write down 30 of them. You now have 30 potential videos or posts, all backed by real demonstrated search demand.
**Step 4: Create content that fully solves the problem.**
Do not make a video that loosely covers a topic. Make a video that completely answers the question someone typed into the search bar. If they searched “how to create a macro in Microsoft Excel,” your video walks through exactly how to create a macro in Microsoft Excel, from opening the right menu to running the finished macro. Useful content builds trust over time, and trust is what converts a viewer into a buyer.
**Step 5: Monetize with affiliate marketing or digital products.**
Once you have content helping real people with real problems, add two income streams: affiliate marketing, where you recommend tools and earn a commission when someone purchases through your link, and digital products, where you sell your own downloadable content like guides, templates, or short courses. Both of these have far better margins than physical print on demand products. Neither one requires you to compete on price with hundreds of other sellers offering the same item.
This is not a path that produces income overnight. It is a path that produces income that compounds over time because you are building something real, content that keeps attracting visitors and buyers, rather than a product listing that has to outrun 100 other identical listings on price every day.
## Find Your X
If you are not certain which of these income paths makes the most sense for your specific skills, schedule, and situation, the Platform Proof Finder quiz was built for exactly that. It takes about two minutes and tells you where to focus first.
**[Take the free Platform Proof Finder quiz here.](https://finder.platformproof.com)**
## Frequently Asked Questions
### Is print on demand still a viable side hustle in 2024 or 2025?
Print on demand is not a dead model, but the specific execution in the original video, copying a viral niche on Etsy with generic designs and no real brand differentiation, is not a good starting point. Sellers who build a real brand, do proper keyword and SEO research before listing, and choose niches that are not already flooded with identical products do make money with print on demand. Most people who try it after watching a viral video skip those foundational steps and see results similar to what I described above.
### How much money do you actually need to start a print on demand shop on Etsy?
Budget at least $100 to $200 before you expect to see your first sale. That covers funding your Printify account to fulfill the first few orders, Etsy listing fees at 20 to 40 cents per listing across multiple listings, and the transaction fees on any sales. The “completely free to start” claim most videos make is not accurate once you get into how the fulfillment side actually works.
### What is Etsy SEO and why does it matter so much for new sellers?
Etsy SEO refers to how you use keywords, titles, tags, and listing descriptions to help your products appear in search results when buyers look for items. Without solid SEO work, your listings are effectively invisible to most shoppers. A new shop with no reviews and no SEO foundation will be buried below established shops that already have hundreds of sales and optimized listings. This is the single skill most new Etsy sellers skip and the primary reason most new shops generate no sales.
### Is selling custom pet products on Etsy actually passive income?
No. Custom products require someone to handle the personalization work on each order. For the type of shop the original video references, that means receiving a photo from the buyer, editing or creating the custom design with the pet’s name, and submitting the finished file to the print on demand service. That is work on every single order. You either do that yourself or you hire a virtual assistant, which costs money that comes out of your already thin margins.
### How much did you actually make on Etsy after nearly two years of selling?
$49 total across 46 orders from roughly 13,000 shop visits, with 140 or more active listings. In the 7 days leading up to the original video, the shop generated $0 in revenue. Those are the actual numbers. I am sharing them because if you tried this or something like it and got similar results, the honest takeaway is that the model has structural problems, not that you failed.
### What is the modp Etsy shop and is it a realistic benchmark for new sellers?
Modp is a real Etsy shop that the original content creator pointed to as an example of what is possible with custom pet print on demand products. It has over 230,000 sales. That shop represents years of accumulated reviews, established SEO authority, and brand recognition that a brand new seller starting a fresh shop today does not have. Holding up a shop at that level as proof that a new seller can replicate the results without addressing those differences is not an honest comparison.
### What two income streams does Alston recommend instead of print on demand?
Affiliate marketing and digital products. Affiliate marketing means recommending products or tools you genuinely use or believe in, and earning a commission when someone buys through your link. Digital products means creating and selling downloadable content you own, like guides, templates, or short courses, at whatever price you set. Both have margins that print on demand cannot match, and neither requires competing with hundreds of other sellers on identical items.
### How do I find content topics if I have never done keyword research before?
Go to the search bar on whatever platform you plan to use, whether that is YouTube, Pinterest, or Google, and start typing questions related to your niche. The autocomplete suggestions that appear are real searches that real people are performing. Write down 30 of them. Those become your first 30 content ideas. You do not need any paid tools to start. The platform’s own search bar is giving you real demand data for free.
## Read Next
Want to see what Etsy actually looks like when you approach it as a digital product platform rather than a print on demand shop? This post covers a full year of honest results with real numbers:
[Selling Digital Products on Etsy: My 1-Year Honest Results](https://alstongodbolt.com/selling-digital-products-on-etsy-my-1-year-honest-results/)
## Sources
– Alston Godbolt, “I Tried It: Get Paid $7 Every Minute on Autopilot” (YouTube, Platform Proof channel)
– Etsy Seller Handbook: Understanding Etsy Transaction Fees and Listing Fees
– Printify Help Center: How Order Funding Works for Print on Demand Sellers
– Etsy, modp shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/modp
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*Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.*