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Let’s get this money Monday started, {{first_name | friend}}. Ever turned down a deal that seemed small, only to realize later it’s worth a whole lot more than you expected? We all have, but I doubt the FOMO has been this bad. Once upon the ’90s, a future tech billionaire offered folks 10% of his brand-new company for $125,000. Spoiler: That 10% would now buy you every single NFL team and then some.
📈 Think you know which legend it was? A) Steve Jobs, B) Jeff Bezos, C) Elon Musk or D) Larry Page? Cast your vote and see what might be the priciest “Nah, I’m good” in history at the end. Talk about a missed stock opportunity.
🛑 Stop spam texts and calls right now. Data brokers sell everything from your address to your Social Security number to anyone willing to pay. Enter Incogni. They scrub your personal info from the web. I worked out a 60% discount just for you. If you’re not 100% completely satisfied, they’ll get your money back! — Kim
📬 Was this forwarded to you? Be the first to know, not the last to hear. Sign up now. It’s free!
TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
Elf-size work

Image: ChatGPT
Let’s talk T-shirts. Not the boring kind. I’m talking about clever, seasonal, giftable shirts people actually want to buy.
Whether it’s a “Dear Santa, I Can Explain…,” “Sleigh My Name, Sleigh My Name” or “Resting Grinch Face” tee, custom tops make great holiday gifts. And thanks to AI and print-on-demand, you can start a T-shirt side hustle from your couch.
No design skills, inventory or shipping labels required. Yes, really.
Maybe you're thinking, “I can’t pull this off, Kim Komando.” Oh, honey, that attitude’s more outdated than dial-up. 😏 Got a teen, coworker, or friend who’s always “so broke” but somehow never skips their $10 lattes? Hit the share buttons at the end and do them a favor. Now buckle up, I’m about to show you how it’s done.
🧠 Step 1: Brainstorm ideas
Start with a tool like ChatGPT to generate concepts and slogans. Prompt it like “Give me 15 funny Christmas T-shirt ideas for dads.”
Want niche ideas? Ask for Christmas wear for gamers, teachers, dog moms or pickleball fans. AI is a gold mine of clever copy.
🎨 Step 2: Use AI art tools
Use Canva, Kittl or DALL·E to design a shirt graphic. You can even generate original art like “a cool cartoon Santa lifting weights” or “retro-style gingerbread cookies doing yoga.”
Keep your designs clean and high-contrast. Save as PNG files with a transparent background and 300 DPI resolution.
🛍️ Step 3: Make money
Upload your design to platforms. They list the items for sale, print the design on the item, ship it, collect the taxes, and the rest. You make the money.
Amazon Merch on Demand: You earn $2 to $8 per shirt, depending on the sale price and type (standard, premium, long sleeve, etc.). It’s on Amazon Prime, which boosts visibility during the holiday shopping season.
Etsy + Printful: Combine AI art with Etsy traffic. After production and fees, you’ll typically earn $5 to $15 per shirt, depending on your pricing and upgrades (like organic cotton). Btw, this is how I run my Etsy store that, wow, needs love. I promise to work on it!
Some sellers make a few hundred dollars a month with just a few designs. Others pull in thousands with a strong catalog and niche focus.
💰 Step 4: Promote your shirts
Use social media to get the word out. Run seasonal promotions or bundle deals. Ask ChatGPT to write your product descriptions and holiday captions for Instagram or Facebook. So get going!
🎅 Hey, what do you call a Christmas wreath made out of $100 bills? Aretha Franklins! (lol) Now with that beautiful smile on your face, hit the share icons below to tell your friends and family about this innovative way to make money. Maybe you’ll get a cut!
Stop strangers from finding you online
Truth is, with just a simple Google search, anyone could find out where you live. Whether it's a stalker or scammer, your personal info is out there and that’s scary.
But there’s a way to fight back: Incogni. It doesn’t just remove your name from Google results. Incogni works quietly in the background to wipe your data from people-search sites, data brokers and hidden databases you may not even know exist.
One of my readers recently wrote to me:
"I smile every time I see your newsletter promoting Incogni. I took you up on your 60% off offer and Incogni has erased my records from about 300 places so far. Well done, Kim, and thank you!".
You can protect yourself too, and it’s easier than you think.
Please support our sponsors!
THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW
Should you ever unlock your phone for a stranger?
Baylor from Knoxville, Tennessee, wants to know if it was a bad idea to hand her mom’s unlocked phone to a retail repairman. Then, how one “ghost car” caused chaos on the road while another rolled straight across a putting green. Plus, some car manufacturers are locking features like heated seats and remote start behind monthly paywalls.
🎧 Subscribe on your favorite platform:
WEB WATERCOOLER
🚨 Microsoft’s sneaky update: Starting this month, Windows 11 machines with Microsoft 365 will quietly get new “companion apps” like People, Files, and Calendar all tied to Copilot. Microsoft says it’ll boost productivity. You might call it bloat. Want to stop them from auto‑launching? Head to Settings → Apps → Startup and toggle them off, or in Microsoft 365 go to Account → Connected apps to disable integrations. Your PC, your rules.
🥪 Arby’s gets roasted: Turns out those towering Arby’s sandwiches in ads may be Photoshop’s finest work. A lawsuit says they show twice the meat you really get and mislead folks into thinking the beef is rare. A judge just refused to dismiss the case, so Arby’s has to deal with its roast beef reality check in court.
A cloud in space: Jeff Bezos said the AI boom will push massive data centers into orbit within 20 years. Basically, solar-powered, gigawatt clusters will beam information back by laser. He swears they’ll beat Earth’s power costs. Oh, a wild footnote from that talk? He predicts millions of people living in space, too.
🚪 Trapped in a Cybertruck: Tesla’s being sued by the parents of a 19-year-old who died when a Cybertruck hit a tree and caught fire last November in California. The lawsuit claims Krysta Tsukahara and her two friends didn’t die on impact. They were unable to escape the car. How awful. If you own a Cybertruck, learn how to open the doors when there is no power right now. It could save your life.
🛒 ChatGPT goes checkout: If you’re in the U.S., you can buy Etsy stuff inside ChatGPT. Shopify’s next. It’s single-item for now, Stripe handles payment, and merchants pay the fee, not you. Amazon and Walmart aren’t playing (yet).
Stolen property: With just a forged signature, your home and equity can be stolen. I trust Home Title Lock to get 24/7 monitoring and suspicious activity alerts to safeguard my home and finances. Get 14 days FREE plus a free Title History Report.*
🪟 Smarter windows: Corning (yep, the iPhone glass folks) dropped new “Enlighten” windows that are essentially energy-saving machines. Normal windows leak heat 10 to 20 times worse than your walls. These new ones? Up to 5x more efficient. Ah yes, finally an energy-saving way to stare at the Amazon guy delivering your packages.
DIGITAL LIFE HACK
How scammers get free stuff from your doorstep
Think your neighbor’s package mix-up is innocent? It could be a scam to get free stuff from Amazon. Here’s how the trick works and what you should do instead.
DEALS OF THE DAY
⚡ Shockingly early Prime steals
Big Deal Days kick off tomorrow, but these techy discounts already dropped.
🔋 Cordless vacuum cleaner (25% off): Lightweight, tangle-free and moonlights as a handheld vac for tight crevices.
Handheld massage gun (40% off): Beat those knots. Heat, cold and percussion therapy hit every sore spot.
🎧 Bluetooth headphones (34% off): 65 hours of wireless listening. Yes, that’s almost three full days without charging.
Amazon smart plug (48% off): Plug into the future and turn any old gadget into a smart device.
💡 LED bedside lamp (30% off): Rechargeable and portable, so you can take cozy lighting wherever, whenever.
👩💻 Get your tech fix: More Prime Big Deal Day deals are live today. Grab ’em now before you get left in the digital dust.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: For the best viewing distance, take your TV’s size in inches and multiply by 1.2. So if your screen is 40 inches, you’ll want to sit about 48 inches (4 feet) back. Math, works every time.
Ears the catch: Apple’s new Live Translation feature is finally coming to older AirPods (yay!), but there’s a catch. It only works if you also have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. So unless you’ve got a $1K+ phone and the right earbuds and iOS 26, it’s back to Google Translate and hand gestures. Or get the new AirPod 3s. The heart sensing and live translation is so good.
📖 Make your Kindle feel like a real book: Love this little change. Go to Settings > Screen and brightness > Show covers on lock screen.
Cable hoarding pays off: That tangle of old cords in your junk drawer? Some are weirdly valuable. GameCube cables can fetch $200, and even a dusty SCSI might score $50. Before you toss that HDMI doppelgänger, check eBay, nerds will pay. Turns out nostalgia is profitable, and so is not cleaning your garage for 15 years. Check here to see how much your old cables are worth. You’re welcome.
🦆 Ducking autocorrect: Tired of your phone “fixing” words you meant to type? On iOS, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement to add your own. Team Android, go to Settings > System > Keyboard > Personal dictionary. Or just type the word, tap it in the suggestions bar, and teach your phone who’s boss.
Raycon’s anniversary means 20% off the Everyday Earbuds Classic! I love their comfy fit, Active Noise Cancellation, Awareness mode and up to 32 hours of battery life. Grab a pair with my link and see why fans love them: BuyRaycon.com/KIM.*
WHAT THE TECH?

Image: Inversion
📦 The final front door
It’s a bird, it’s a plane. Nope, it’s 500 pounds of stuff.
Meet Arc, the new spacecraft from LA startup Inversion. Think of it as FedEx with rocket fuel, a military-grade delivery capsule that can launch supplies from orbit and land them anywhere on Earth in under an hour.
Need drones, ammo or emergency meds fast? Arc says you could literally press a button and have a care package drop itself from the heavens, parachuting down faster than you can say “tracking number.”
🚀 Space shipping: Because you absolutely, positively need it before the battle’s over, not before 8 p.m. Tuesday.
LOGGING OUT …
The answer: B) Jeff Bezos! Picture it: 1995. Jeff Bezos is pitching his dinky little online bookstore idea called Amazon and offers one guy 10% of the company for just $125,000. The guy passes. Fast-forward to today, and that slice would be worth over $1 trillion. Yep, trillion with a T. Bezos heard “no” more times than a toddler at bedtime before scraping together his first million.
Fun fact: In those early days, Bezos drafted Amazon’s infamous “regret minimization framework,” a way to make decisions by imagining yourself looking back from age 80. I love that.
✋ One more thing: Incogni has already requested my info be removed from over 1,900 different data-broker and people-search sites. I’ve tried doing this myself over the years, and I was happy if I hit a dozen. Incogni offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose except frustrating spam calls and email. Use my link for 60% off.
This is the #1 tech newsletter in the United States. Tomorrow, how computer and device viruses are changing and getting more malicious.
🦾 You’re the update the algorithm’s been waiting for. And you look marvelous! — Kim
📣 Don’t keep me a secret: Share this email with friends (or copy URL here)
Photo credit(s): ChatGPT, Inversion
Companies noted with an asterisk (*) sponsor my national radio show. Also, as an Amazon Associate, we earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
This newsletter and its content are intended for informational purposes only. They are provided without warranty of any kind. You shouldn’t construe anything provided here as legal, health, medical, technical, tax, investment, financial or any other kind of advice.
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