CHAPTER 01
Designs, posters, second-hand clothes and learning to put my work out there.
The first shop. And a lot of products.
My very first shop started with around 50 of my favourite designs. I put them on shirts, hoodies, mugs, pillows, stickers, hats and phone cases. Naturally, I wanted to try all of them.
That turned into more than 500 products. It was my introduction to print-on-demand, product mockups and the slightly overwhelming reality of running a catalogue. The work became more polished later, but this is where I started.
A camera, second-hand clothes and my first earnings.
I used to buy second-hand clothes at Humana, clean them up, photograph them with a DSLR I learned to use in school, take measurements and write the listings.
The profit was usually €0.50 to €3 per item. Small numbers, but making money from something I had done myself felt huge. I built up a 4.8-star rating and more than 25 reviews. These days, I mostly sell things I no longer use.
From generating art to learning how a shop works.
After making more than a thousand images with Midjourney, I wanted to do something with them. I chose posters and built an Etsy shop with 41 products.
I learned about shipping, preparing artwork for print-on-demand and presenting products. I also hired someone to help with search-friendly titles and descriptions. That experience would eventually lead me to build DoneListing.
Alongside the physical posters, I offered digital files in PNG, SVG and PDF formats for people making their own projects.
One shop. Several creative directions.
This began with albums of AI-generated art: twelve designs per collection, inspired by Western and Chinese zodiac signs. Later came a Halloween collection built around ghosts, followed by framed posters.
I kept experimenting with the artwork, file formats and presentation. If I had opened a new shop every time I changed direction, I would have needed a second browser just for the tabs.
Learning to put my work out into the world.
Some products were experiments. Others were more serious. The common thread was learning to finish something and offer it to another person.
The range was pretty wide: researched B2B cold-email templates, custom Notion workspaces and digital resources. Putting a price on something I made was a skill I had to practise too.
From thumbnails to agents and content workflows.
My first Fiverr listings were for YouTube thumbnails and AI image upscaling. Both came from things I already did for my own videos and artwork.
Now I also offer AI agent setup on local machines or cloud infrastructure, plus social media content creation and management. The examples come from systems and workflows I use myself.
GOT SOMETHING IN MIND?
A project, an experiment, a “could we build this?”
I’m happy to hear it.
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