3D Print on Demand for Profit (Without 3DHubs!)

are you interested in making money with 3d printing on demand have you just been kicked off 3d hubs well stuff them in today's video I'm going to talk about how you can make money yourself 3d printing on demand without any of these external websites but it will take a little bit of hustle let's get started [Music] how's it going guys Angus here from makers Muse and welcome to a very special video which has been spurred on by 3d hubs kicking off everyone who is in the Hobby 3d printing bracket so 3d hubs started where you can list your services in your 3d printer you have at home and then people could send orders to you through their website and system and then you could print on demand and send it off to them but at the end of this month they're kicking everyone off who has these hobby level machines in favour for their industrial printers but quite frankly you don't need them and I'm going to go through everything you need to know about 3d printing on demand yourself without any of these websites but you might be asking two questions one who is this guy and is he qualified to talk about 3d printing on demand and two what does he have to gain about telling me how to make money 3d print on demand well the first question I actually did this as my full-time job for several years I ran a print studio in Perth and I was the in-house designer and in-house print manager I would take orders provide quotes talk to customers do print and send them out I did the whole shebang for several years and the second question what do I have to gain well I don't do that anymore I run makers muse full-time and I sort of found my calling as more of an educator rather than printing on demand I've already done a video on how you can make money through various methods with 3d printing and I did talk about 3d printing on demand in that video but I didn't go into any depth about exactly how I would go about doing it using my experience so let's get straight into it ok so what is 3d printing on demand anyway well the concept is simple a customer comes to you with a model and then basically you 3d print them and then you send it off to them or give it to them and you charge them a am out of money in fair exchange 3d printing on demand is quite popular because not everyone has a disposable income to buy a 3d printer even though they're getting cheaper these days but mostly not everyone has the skill or patience to run and maintain 3d printers they just want the part and they're happy to pay fair exchange to get it that's the core principle of 3d printing on demand and many websites exist to do this on an industrial level Shapeways and now 3d hubs offer this with high-end machines which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars this leaves a gap in the market in my opinion for the lower side of things where people want stuff local well they're not prepared to pay hundreds of dollars through it for a 3d print let's start with the most important factor choosing your 3d printer ok so if it's really pretty on demand the most important factor in my opinion is reliability liability liability reliability everything else comes second because when you're printing to tight schedules with a backlog of prints you need to send and get get off the machine you don't want it to fail there's nothing worse than having failures after failures are two failures or constantly having to tweak tinker and tweak your machine to make it work so in my experience that comes before print quality you see you can have machines that can print it really high detail but they're finicky and models don't really always work on them so like these machines behind me I probably choose the Purusha like the mark 2s here probably not multi material but single color that's a fairly reliable printer the could could create on the other hand huh but I modified it before printing and flexible filaments but I wouldn't really list that as a service because it's really unreliable and geometry dependent and then the craft but plus way down here extremely bulletproof machine prints happily day in day out but the print quality isn't really that great however if you make that clear with your clients they'd much rather get something on time and - a reliable standard bed saying that might work really well but sometimes you'll have to tell them well sorry your print failed again and I need to print it again I've been there it sucks go for something reliable it doesn't have to be expensive just make sure that the that it's clear to your customer the quality they're going to get and it's dependable and this also goes for the filament ranges you offer I see some people offering everything under the rainbow will print in blue white black pink bread whatever choose a range of filaments that you can keep in stock that you know print well for example the gray a white a black white and black just seems to be the most popular colors anyway and only consider other colors for high batch high-volume prints or high-value customers don't do it for just one-off small batch prints I would recommend sticking to a small amount of well-known tweeked filaments that you can rely on and you have in stock for your printing service if you're not sure it's really pretty to get well I have tons of reviews and tutorials and guides around 3d printers and what to expect but again don't go for something that's not reliable you're saying that is doesn't have to be expensive but you just have to make sure that the prints more often than not actually succeed yes even in 2018 this is still a consideration but if you're already on 3d hubs and you already have a range of printers you know works reliably then you don't have to worry about that too much we can move on to the next important stage becoming known this is extremely important because we're no longer be gonna be listed on a single website where people can find you through that website you're going to have to go out on your own and attract customers to you this sounds daunting and to a degree it is it's also exciting and also far more powerful and lucrative then having people come to a single-seater website to find hundreds of hubs you really want people to seek you out because they know you do really good jobs and we have a really reliable turnaround and you're a really really good guy so how would you do that well first of all you want to list on places that people might be looking for printing on demand so for example in Australia we have gum tree I think it's in the UK - in the yo guys and states might have Craigslist a very good place to start but also seek out your local universities or schools or tapes or whatever you call them their colleges etc where students might need to print things for example for engineering classes or industrial design classes and then they might need prints on demand also you kind of want to become known by all the local sort of mad inventors and film studios where they might need small props and things or maybe engineering firms with jigs where they don't actually yet have their own 3d printers these are really good opportunities to enlist for your services and again if you give them a good result they'll keep coming back to you and it's worth noting that you probably want to jump onto 3d hubs and contact all your previous customers if possible I mean it was something that's pretty hot so got to keep the ages ago and tell them that you're now going to be available separately and what's the worst that they're going to do kick you off their platform they're already doing that so basically try to contact your old customers if you're not already in contact with them and let them know that you'll be still be doing printing on demand for them just directly what's wrong with that next is extremely important you want to develop yourself a brand here on maker's news I developed my logo I developed the name I got a domain name I've got the the YouTube channel I've got a Twitter handle I developed a brand around me basically and you won't do the same you want to jump on your favorite social platform social media platform and share yo your awesome prints that you're doing providing that your client allows the release of that and then also maybe consider sharing tips and tricks and tutorials like maybe you're really good at mayor so how to export good 3d printing files from mayor stuff like that basically give back to the community and maybe even find a specific niche that you can really crack and you're passionate about so then those people when they need something done or their friend comes to them and says hey I need something done they go oh yeah I know him go straight to him developing your brand is extremely important because as I just suggested you want to in word-of-mouth advertising what a mouth is hugely powerful you want this basically people sister to suggest to you when their friends and family and colleagues ask where do I go to get this done it's free and it's really powerful because they trust the person who recommended you and I would recommend that well above any kind of adsense or Adwords or anything like that where you pay for advertising you know who looks at advertising you probably skip the Yad before this video let's be real and basically with a good brand you can really start to get those orders in but it will take time be prepared for a fairly long slog and fairly long hustle to get your brand well established but just be passionate and realistic about it and you'll actually yeah you can actually get really really far I never thought I'd be here I have my food makers ears but here I am doing this is my job and I absolutely love it so definitely get a good brand in place and get the domain name domain name is extremely important alright so establish it need to develop a brand external to these websites but the crux of why people tend to use these websites anyway is pricing the thing about these websites that make them so attractive is it does the quoting for you it takes you STL file in and spits out a number that then you can you can then go just and print a thing and not worry about getting the actual pricing so this is where it's gonna be a little bit more difficult to go alone there is quoting engines available but they're often not cheap especially if you're just doing this in a small volume but it's definitely possible to do it just manually so my first tip on pricing and quoting do not compete on price you don't want to be the person offering the lowest amount because in my experience those are the worst clients people who shop on price for bespoke items really really are a pain in the ass if I'm being completely honest because they don't understand technology they don't appreciate your efforts and your work and they are not loyal I'll just go to the next person who goes cheaper than then you buy five cents it's like there's people that go on eBay and just searching your cheapest and go for the one that's like essenti anyway basically don't compete on price that don't be afraid to manually quote so the major attraction to a lot of these websites was the fact that the quoting system was automatic someone would upload an STL file and then the system would quote it automatically for you which is really handy and hands-off however it's also kind of dangerous I mean how many people had people uploading how many times if you have people uploading files that were in centimeter format not millimeters or inches for example in our tiny and that they're like wow it's so cheap then you have to go back to them to say actually no your file costs two hundred dollars not to two dollars you're like what is this an outrage so when you have to quote quoting manually isn't such a bad thing especially when we've established we're not going to compete on price we don't care about that lowest lowest tier you can actually give them more of us bespoke service so when people uploads files to you to quote manually there's where it's ways to do it I just use just use an Excel spreadsheet basically and you would put in your cost of material your time and how much you would pro would quote for the time the the depreciation of the machine how many prints you want to get off the machine before your deem it paid off for example your labor and the startup cost as well essentially this allows you to see the file before even quote and you could say okay it's an architectural model exported out over a whole some horrible software that's unprintable well sorry this can't be printed or maybe you will offer a file fixing service in addition or maybe their file isn't even in isn't even by possible with FDM machines it's too thin or it's too delicate or maybe the file is perfect which case you just chuck it through your slicer get a time and material estimate and then go to your your spreadsheet to get a quote so basically you want to make sure you take all costs into account and if you're looking to 3d print on demand just as a hobby and you don't really care about paying your machine off whatever then you probably should stop watching this video because I'm about taking it seriously and actually making a profitable sustainable business around pretty on demand but the takeaway here is to put a lot of time into your quoting engines so you just need to put in your print with you'll amount and your print time and I'll spit out a cost now value-added extras this is my favorite part alright so I've talked about the idea of file fixing so file fixing is where the model is bad it's not ready to be 3d printed you can do this with mesh mixer and other bits of free software like blender and it's a it's an art form so if you can file fix you should charge money for it how much you know should you charge well it's up to you you know I would charge $75 an hour for it and design feeds designing stuff so if someone comes into a model and it's not quite right and they need to tweaked or they come in with an idea without the model you can charge money for that there's my favorite to the rush B and the pain-in-the-ass fee all right some clients will just be this sort of type that want it really quickly and then you can charge in a lot of money forks you have to put other prints out further from the queue then some clients will just be a real pain and really you need to charge them more money to be make it worthwhile working for them that might be a bit controversial but it's just how I treat it which is another reason that it's better to actually do the quoting in-house yourself then rely on external engines which are indiscriminate of the client and exactly what they want so there we go that's pricing very quick I'm not going to go into much more detail on that spend your time on it though now the next is some warnings and final advice starting with disclaimers so your 3d printing things on hobby level machines these prints if they're in PLA for example are not suitable for high-end use where human lives might be at stake they're not suitable for car parts not suitable for medical parts make sure you have a very good disclaimer that goes with all quotes before you even read them and it needs to be very clear that you're not responsible for any injuries or property damage or anything like that should your part fail because this is just a 3d print you can't guarantee it's gonna be that great and in terms of strength or reliability in the elements like a showed in my video exposing PLA to the Sun for a year you need to make sure that's good and possibly consult a lawyer about it because in the case that something happens you want to be protected next is be legit for tax purposes I am a sole trader here in Australia and by doing so every purchase I have relating to the channel is a tax deduction does mean I haven't however do pay tax every quarter and I keep a log of that in Xero so I use Xero for bookkeeping keep it keep a log of my receipts and my income it's a whole other thing I never expected to be doing myself but if you're gonna do it legit you need to do it like that not saying do it like sole trader depends on your country again this is not legal or business advice go seek out proper advice for your country I'm just saying how I do it next don't be a yes man my old boss was a lovely guy but he would say yes to pretty much every job that walks through the door which led to a lot of problems me when I had to try to make these jobs actually work like Ken he's really pretty huge residential model using just Google Maps data yeah sure we can just look at job we've got or can you 3d print clear or can he 3d print this job to pick up tomorrow and he takes 14 hours in the first full of errors don't say yes for free job again you don't wanna get the low low-end pricey you don't compete on price and you don't want to compete on saying yes to everything it's not worth it work on your brand and work on good clients and on the same vein don't be afraid to fire her bad clients if they stuff your around you can give them a refund and make them walk and reward good clients i legit still have people contacting me they seek me out through somehow I think they find your makers muse now to ask me if they can do pre toast for them these are people I worked with before I had the channel when I was just printing on demand I didn't even run the company they just knew me because I did a good job for them so they seek me out of like sorry I don't do that anymore so you want to do good jobs for good clients and they will keep coming back don't be afraid to say no to stupid requests like can you three pretty clear no you can 3d print with clear filament but it won't be clear hope that makes sense and finally I have this quote which is under-promise over-deliver so my dad gave this mug to me and he's a fantastic business mentor basically what this means is you don't want to promise more than you can actually deliver but it's actually more valuable to under promise and then deliver more value so for example here's a scenario someone comes in with the print that takes 12 hours you could say yeah sure you can pick it up tomorrow what something goes wrong well here's two scenarios you'd have to call them up and be like oh hey Mark sorry your print failed overnight you'll have to pick it up the next day awkward sucks I had to do those calls hate it or you say great you can pick it up in two days and they're like can I pick you up tomorrow like no sorry two days then you call them next day when it succeeds and say hey the print is finished early would you like to come pick it up today this gives you room if the print fails you can get them the next day but if it succeeds which it probably would they're happy they're actually really quite stoked that you were realistic and they can pick it up earlier or they pick it up on the day you promised so under-promise and over-deliver and i hope i've done that here in this video today and quite frankly stuff 3d hubs if they're going to go professional that's that's their choice and really you should feel confident to go out on your own and build a brand and business around your services and offering and give them to people in for fair exchange and you can make a profitable business out of it it's not gonna be easy just like everything everything when you're running you're starting a business it's not gonna be easy but you can do it I hope I've shown you here today just some information on doing that if you did enjoy this video guys please consider subscribing to make us music because I'm all about the hustle here I okay I did buy this shirt pretty much to wear it for a video like this I would love to have you on board and I look for seeing again very shortly catch you later guys bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 844,586

Keywords: 3d printing on demand, make money with 3d printing, how to profit with 3D printing, 3d printing business, on demand, tutorial, webinar, guide, maker's muse, 3DHubs, makersmuse, angus deveson

Id: PceI1AtgFvo

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 21 2018