Why Gen Z Artists Are Turning to Physical Side Hustles

It’s hard to find businesses that haven’t at least experimented with AI. According to a late-2025 report from McKinsey, over 70% of businesses have begun using generative AI tools. 1

While AI is principally used to automate rote, low-level tasks, the technology is also being used by businesses for creative purposes. One area where this is obvious is social media marketing.

According to widely cited data from the AI image generator platform Artsmart.ai, which appeared in publications like Forbes, 71% of images shared on social media globally are AI-generated. Artsmart also reported that 39% of US marketers use AI to create social media images.

Businesses believe that using generative AI allows them to cut costs, and in many cases, they’re right. But for artists, it’s costing them their livelihoods.

In a study from Carnegie Mellon University, half of the visual artists surveyed said that they’d lost income due to image generators. A staggering 90% said that the technology has taken away commissions, jobs, and career opportunities.

One respondent told the researchers that many creatives are now questioning the viability of a career in the arts due to AI’s impact. “It’s been pretty demoralizing at times seeing a lot of younger artists giving up because they don’t see a future in art,” they said. “They’re abandoning their creative passions because of AI.”

Gen Z’s resistance to AI “slop”

As social media becomes increasingly full of “artificially” generated content, young people are getting tired of what they perceive as a barrage of AI slop.

Gen Z’s attitude toward AI is the most negative of any generation, especially when it comes to art. In a 2025 survey from the Pew Research Center, 66% of adults under 30 said they would like a painting less if they found out it was done by AI. For comparison, only 36% of Americans aged 65 and older said the same. 2

In a Reddit post on the subreddit r/GenZ, many commenters echoed this negative sentiment toward AI art. One user wrote that “the thought of reading books or watching movies made by AI fills me with loathing.” Threads like this—many of which have similarly colorful language—are common across the Internet.

The same goes for AI-generated music. A study from the music and entertainment insights company Luminate compared attitudes toward AI use in music creation from May to November 2025. In the survey, 46% of Gen Alpha and Gen Z respondents reported being either “much” or “slightly” less interested in AI music in November, compared to 40% in May. 3 Young people’s attitudes toward the technology are hardening over time.

Interestingly, Baby Boomers were actually the most skeptical of AI-generated music (48%). Audrey Schomer, a media analyst and research editor at Luminate who authored the report, told NPR that all generations are becoming less enthusiastic about AI’s role in the arts, although they don’t all feel the same about every medium.

“Across the board … consumers are net negative,” she said. “People are more likely to feel uncomfortable than to feel comfortable with AI use.”

With digital spaces feeling inauthentic, Gen Z is becoming more interested in physical, tangible goods and in-person experiences. Some creatives have been taking advantage of that.

Side Hustles spoke with Trinity Shiroma, a 25-year-old architect-turned-full-time artist from Florida. Shiroma runs a snail mail club, for which she sends 5-by-7-inch prints of her artwork to subscribers around the US.

Shiroma told us that she originally started her snail mail club to help support herself “without having to return to work in an architecture firm.” Since starting in 2025, she’s amassed about 2,400 subscribers, and now earns about $16,000 a month from it.

Other crafty Gen Zers have turned to snail mail as a source of income. Josephine Simon, who also used to work as an architect, told Business Insider that she quit her job to become a full-time artist in August 2024. The New York-based artist said she launched her print club to avoid relying on commissions.

“I realized if there were a way to get freedom and be able to work for myself, that would be the ultimate goal,” she said.

Part-time snail mail clubs

While these artists turned their hobbies into full-time gigs, others are using them to earn money on a part-time basis. Christine Tyler Hill, a crossing guard based in Vermont, told The Wall Street Journal how she turned her illustration hobby into a $14,000-a-month side hustle.

Christine started selling subscriptions for $8 a month, offering an eight-page magazine with illustrations from her garage art studio and observations from the intersection she worked at. She posted a video on TikTok advertising her snail mail club, and within a few days, it had hundreds of thousands of views. Around 1,000 people signed up.

“People really want physical things,” she said. “The response to it has been crazy.”

 

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The demand for “real” experiences

Shiroma’s success with her snail mail business is one example of the resurgence of physical media among Gen Z.

The analog music and print book economies are growing in the US and UK, with Gen Z leading the trend. Fortune reported that between 2006 and 2022, record (vinyl) sales in the US grew from $14.2 million to over $1.4 billion. Gen Zers and millennials also make up the largest group of library users in the US, with 54% of 13- to 40-year-olds saying they visited libraries within the past year. 4

This affinity for the physical has mirrored Gen Z’s growing impatience with AI.

In one exercise in a study from Columbia Business School, participants valued AI-labeled art 62% less than art identified as human-made. 5 Sheena S. Iyengar, the S. T. Lee Professor of Business in the Marketing Department at Columbia Business School, said that participants valued the human touch most when it came to evaluating art.

“Although AI may replicate a style, it can never capture the deep narrative forged by human effort and intuition,” she said. “The labor, creativity, and passion that characterize human artistry endow each work with an intrinsic value that a machine cannot achieve.”

Put another way, for a lot of Gen Z, knowing that something was created by a real human being makes that thing feel more authentic.

Subscription fatigue

Another reason young people are turning to physical goods is due to the perceived lack of ownership they have when it comes to digital products.

Many Gen Zers are claiming to experience “subscription burnout” from signing up for various services, like music or video streaming, without ever actually coming to own anything.

According to a 2024 survey from the subscription bundling and payments company Bango, that year, American consumers spent $77 each month or $924 annually on subscriptions on average. The survey also found that US respondents had an average of 4.5 ongoing subscriptions.

However, signup rates are on the decline. Subscription growth across the main streaming platforms dropped to 7% in 2025, down from 12% in 2024, according to data from subscription economy data provider Antenna.

A lot of Gen Z and millennial consumers feel that paying so much for a product that they never come to own doesn’t make sense. Rudy Ramirez, a medical IT worker and YouTuber from Georgia, told Fortune that he opts for DVDs over streaming platforms to get that sense of ownership streaming can’t offer.

“Anything that’s digital is never yours,” he said. Conversely, “Amazon’s not going to come into your house and take your DVD movies. They’re yours forever.”

It might seem counterintuitive to respond by opting for another subscription model, as with a snail mail club. But with them, you actually get something real. Even if you cancel your subscription, a physical art piece can’t be taken away.

Shiroma told us that this sense of ownership that you don’t find with digital media is what’s driven so many people to subscribe to her club.

“I think there’s something really special about receiving something in the mail that brings a little joy once a month,” she said. “Physical media gives people something tangible that they can actually collect and enjoy. It feels more personal and permanent than something that only exists on a screen.”

If you’re interested in starting a snail mail club of your own, Shiroma has a few tips for how to make it work:

Build your following

Shiroma told us that before starting a subscription-based snail mail club, you should try to build a decent following.

“I always recommend that you build a community of people who love your art, writing, or whatever you create before you start a mail club,” she said. “If you start a mail club with no following or community, it will be much harder to gain subscribers from the start.”

To actually build that community, Shiroma said that using social media is “the best way.” While she has a website of her own, she stated that without social channels, her site wouldn’t get any exposure.

Shiroma said that her client base consists of “mostly art collectors,” as well as those interested in architecture, traveling, or crafting. If you’re creating a snail mail club based around a particular niche, you should look at how other creators in that space are promoting their art.

Have multiple income streams

While Shiroma has built a successful snail mail club, she also told us that this “is not guaranteed to turn a profit,” stressing that you should do it because you enjoy and are passionate about it.

She recommended having multiple income streams. “There are many other income streams I rely on as an artist, which I think is really important,” she said. “Things like my online art shop, original paintings, brand partnerships, and events are just a few!”

Although she doesn’t currently offer them, Shiroma also told us that commissions are a good option for those looking to build artistic side hustles.

Create a professional website

Shiroma said that a professional-looking website is indispensable for a snail mail club. If you don’t have much experience building websites, you’re best off using a Content Management System (CMS), which makes the process of creating and hosting a site much easier.

Some of the most popular platforms for building websites include:

• WordPress
• GoDaddy
• Wix
• Squarespace

Many of these platforms have free plans available, although they are far more limited. If you’re starting a snail mail club, you should opt for a paid plan with your CMS of choice.

Along with a professional website, Shiroma also recommended using a subscription tracking service to keep track of your subscribers, with popular platforms including beehiiv and Patreon.

Set up payment processing

Another essential part of your snail mail club side hustle should be payment processing. Shiroma told us that she personally uses Stripe, but there are multiple platforms you can try, such as PayPal or Shopify.

Note that many of these platforms have free plans available, but you will be charged fees when someone makes a purchase. For instance, Stripe charges you 2.9% + $0.30 for every purchase made. Factor this into your monthly budget.

If you’re going to go with a subscription model for your club, Stripe Billing is probably the best option. You can either opt for a pay-as-you-go plan, which will take 0.7% of your billing volume, or a monthly subscription starting at $620 a month.

Even if Gen Z craves real experiences and objects over digital ones, does that mean physical media gigs or side hustles are viable in the long run? Art-based side hustles have a reputation for being tricky to pull off, and while some Gen Z artists have had success with snail mail, trends come and go.

Along with the transient nature of most trends, niches like this also tend to get oversaturated very quickly. With so many people turning to snail mail at the same time, it may be tricky for those just starting out to compete.

Shiroma told us that she hopes her snail mail club will be sustainable in the long term, but acknowledged that the future’s uncertain.

She reiterated the importance of having multiple income streams as an artist. “For me, the priority is to continue growing it as much and for as long as possible while also creating other income streams and ways to support myself.”

A middle path between digital and analog

There’s also the question of how to actually attract customers for a physical business. While art fairs and galleries have always been a clear pathway for artists looking to sell their goods, social media now plays a huge part in building a customer base.

Most snail mail clubs gain traction on social media platforms like TikTok. Those who want to attract subscribers need to create digital content to advertise their art.

This isn’t compatible with a complete rejection of the virtual world in favor of tangible things. But starting a snail mail club doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing.

The route forward for artists might not be as binary as digital and analog. In the end, the most viable path might be a balance between the two.