Going Global with AI: How a Small-Town Kid Is Making $30,000 a Month Drawing Pets

I came across a story recently that really stuck with me.

In Tongxiang, Zhejiang, a young man born after 2000 named Xu Kaijie sells pet portraits on Etsy, the overseas handmade-goods marketplace. Watercolor style — you send him a photo of your cat or dog, and he paints you a picture.

He makes about $30,000 a month.

Here's the thing: every single one of those paintings is AI-generated.

He doesn't speak English. He doesn't know design. He had barely touched a computer — he's part of the generation that grew up with smartphones. But now he works fifteen-hour days in his rented apartment, generating images with Midjourney, touching them up in Photoshop. At first it took him two days to produce one. Once he got the hang of it, two minutes per image.

The core of this story isn't how much money he makes.

The core is this: AI has driven the barrier to cross-border e-commerce straight into the ground.

Want to Sell Overseas? You Used to Need Hundreds of Thousands First

Xu Kaijie said something that I think perfectly captures the moment:

"Before, if you wanted to get into this, it was impossible without a few hundred thousand in capital. Stocking inventory, hiring a designer, finding a factory to produce, then selling. By the time you had everything ready, the opportunity was already gone — the wave had already passed."

Think about what that means.

It means that before AI, cross-border e-commerce was a capital-intensive business. You needed a supply chain. You needed designers. You needed inventory turnover capability. A small-town kid with no money, no resources, and no English, wanting to sell things to Americans? Dream on.

But now?

DeepSeek is free to use. Midjourney costs a few dozen dollars a month. Printify handles your printing and shipping. Google Translate reads your customer messages for you. As long as you have taste, can pick the right products, and are willing to put in the work, you can open a shop.

The barrier is gone. And once the barrier is gone, the competition arrives.

What Can AI Actually Do for You When Selling Overseas?

I broke it down. Right now, Chinese sellers using AI overseas are mainly doing three things.

The first: generating product images. A pattern printed on a T-shirt, an illustration on a mug — AI generates the art in seconds, and you list it on SHEIN, Temu, or Shopify. This is the most basic and most crowded track.

The second: generating sales copy and short videos. DeepSeek writes your English product descriptions. HeyGen can even take a two-minute video of you and generate a virtual "you" speaking a foreign language, doing your talking-head videos. You don't speak the language? No problem — AI speaks it for you.

The third: what Xu Kaijie is doing — selling digital products made entirely by AI. Pet portraits, custom figurine designs. The customer places an order, he sends a file. No logistics needed at all.

Sounds great, right?

But have you ever wondered why Xu Kaijie succeeded while most people don't?

AI Can Draw, But It Can't Pick Your Products

Xu Kaijie generated roughly five thousand sample images with Midjourney.

Five thousand. He constantly tweaked his prompts, constantly experimented with formulas, and eventually developed his own signature style. "It's basically a style I figured out on my own. Now I can produce one in two minutes."

This detail matters enormously.

A lot of people think AI-powered cross-border selling means generating something with a tool and slapping it onto a platform. It doesn't. From product selection to pricing, from keywords to ad campaigns, reviewing sales data every day, constantly adjusting your strategy — none of this can be done for you by AI.

Search social media and you'll find countless people sharing their experience "using AI to generate patterns, print them on T-shirts, and sell them overseas." But look closer — how many are actually making money? Most get stuck on not knowing what designs will sell, how to manage inventory, how to handle negative reviews. Even on Temu and Amazon, there still aren't clear guidelines for AI-generated content.

There's a young man from Beijing named Max Deng who posted AI-generated anime short videos on overseas platforms and built an audience of eighty thousand followers. But monetization? He earned a grand total of one thousand RMB in ad revenue. Some jokes that land with Chinese audiences completely miss with foreigners. He's stopped posting now, trying to figure out his next move.

AI is an amplifier. If you have direction, it amplifies your strengths. If you don't, it amplifies that too — it amplifies your running in place.

For High-End Products, AI Still Has a Long Way to Go

Xu Kaijie sells digital files for a dozen or so dollars each. Customers are paying for novelty, for affordability.

But what if you're selling fine jewelry at hundreds or thousands of dollars?

A company that exports jewelry to North America and Australia — their social media lead, Shen Ying (a pseudonym) — brought up using AI to generate images of models wearing their jewelry two years ago. The result?

"Our products need to show details very clearly, and every single style has different details. For example, each ring needs to be photographed from different angles depending on the design. There are too many variables. AI can't deliver that level of customization right now."

She now uses AI for exactly one thing: checking the grammar on gift-card engraving text. That's it.

As for social media content, she insists on writing it herself. "If you truly want to write something that moves people, that makes a gift feel thoughtful, a real person's words are always better. It's like receiving a package from a brand with a handwritten card inside — it will always feel more sincere than something printed."

That hits the nail on the head.

AI can handle the cheap stuff. But sincerity — that's something AI still can't sell.

Where Do You Draw the Line?

This might be the most awkward question in the entire industry.

Cacio, the founder of a marketing consultancy in Beijing, now uses AI every single day. HeyGen for video generation, ChatGPT for blog posts, AI for SEO headlines. Why? Because the volume of content clients demand is enormous. If you don't use AI but your competitor does, they're producing a hundred pieces a day while you produce ten. How do you compete?

But he has a hard line.

"Copying and pasting directly from a competitor — that's my bottom line. A lot of companies use AI-generated work as inspiration, and that's fine. But when someone says 'just copy it and change the name' — especially in music and web design, that's inexcusable."

Etsy recently introduced a feature allowing sellers to disclose whether their products are AI-generated. The result? Nobody volunteered to label theirs. People used to pass off AI-generated work as "handmade." Now, even if you honestly label something "AI-generated," sales haven't dropped much.

Xu Kaijie himself admits: "Virtual customization lets ordinary people experience what used to feel like a luxury, at a very low price."

Do you call that deception?

I think that question is far harder to answer than "Can AI help you go global?"

What Are the People Who Actually Survive on AI Thinking About Every Day?

Xu Kaijie now spends about 1,000 RMB a month just on AI tool subscriptions. Every time a new model drops, he has to try it immediately. "What if a new tool replaces me? If you don't keep up, your income could drop like a rollercoaster. The pressure is enormous."

He's turned his cross-border selling experience into courses — ranging from a 299 RMB text tutorial to a 4,980 RMB one-on-one coaching program. He's already enrolled about two hundred students. Teaching has become a second leg of his income.

Meanwhile, at Shen Ying's company — an established cross-border trading firm — there are no immediate plans to adopt more AI. "The processes at a trading company are fixed, proven, and working. If I bring in a powerful AI tool, the time spent just figuring out how to integrate it might exceed the benefits it brings."

Two attitudes, two ways of surviving.

Xu Kaijie has nothing to lose. AI is his only leverage, so he has to go all in. Shen Ying has something to protect — the existing system is already profitable, AI is just icing on the cake, and it's not worth rocking the boat for.

Your attitude toward AI depends on your circumstances.

A Final Thought

In 2024, two of the top ten most-downloaded AI apps in the world came from China — ByteDance's Doubao and MiniMax's Talkie. Chinese-built AI tools like Manus, Flowith, and HeyGen are already serving users worldwide, backed in part by overseas investors.

Chinese developers are building AI tools that help Chinese sellers move goods to every corner of the globe. And the buyers on the other end likely have no idea that behind the screen is a small-town kid who doesn't speak a word of English, running his entire business on Google Translate and AI.

Is this an opportunity or a bubble?

I'm inclined to say: it's both.

The opportunity belongs to people willing to do what Xu Kaijie did — generate five thousand images, work fifteen-hour days, and never stop experimenting. The bubble belongs to those who think installing a tool is enough to start printing money.

AI hasn't changed who wins. It's changed who gets a seat at the table.