Your question may be academic. $5000 of earned income is very unlikely to be more than half your support. Calling it earned income is not going to qualify you for the AOTC.
That said, this situation is simple. If you want it to be earned income, you must report it as self employment, on schedule C, and pay self employment (social security and Medicare) tax (SET) on the income. There is no way to report hobby income, as earned income, on the IRS forms.
That said, there is a workaround, in TurboTax to force the income onto line 1 of form 1040, as earned income, but that is a red flag to the IRS.
