How To Make Money 3D Printing: Advice From A Pro!

if you've been around the channel long enough you know we like talk about the business of 3D printing but we do that a lot in podcasts and not a lot in main Channel videos so let's talk about it hey guys welcome back to the channel and if you have a 3D printer or you're looking at getting one chances are you've thought about how to make a little extra money on the side or full time with your 3D printer and I'm here to tell you a lot of what you hear out there it's gonna be a bunch of malarkey unless it's telling you to leave a like and get subscribed because we like to talk about this kind of stuff and we're gonna do it more often so stay tuned we're gonna be talking a lot more about the business behind 3D printing and how you too can do it but it all starts with that bass a lot of people say go to school get a business degree I've got two of them while they have been helpful I don't think that a college education is any substitute for just getting out there and figuring it out the whole F around in find out Mantra is not a great way to do business but it's certainly not a bad way to learn because at some point you're going to make the mistake schooling or otherwise you're going to make mistakes and unless you got a bunch of bands wait I got these from the dollar store not not not these bands but you got the idea you're gonna end up basically well pulling yourself up by your bootstraps I I don't I don't own boots so uh shoelaces sure it's a shoestring budget okay let's just get that out of our heads yes I I went through this work to find those props for this video you're welcome it is recommended that you have at least six to eight months of experience running a 3D printer and doing it well with minimal failures whether you're running something like a prusa a bamboo creality so Vol or any of the other machines out there what you know is what you know and that's what you should stick to even the Cat knows that this is not an overnight process looking at other businesses can be a little difficult looking at big people like shapeways and sculptio and how they've turned it into a multi-million dollar Venture when you just have one fdm printer not exactly the fairest of comparisons obviously you can start slow we always recommend that you find a market that you know if you're a car person stick in the car market if you have a lot of Agriculture near you stick into that [Music] the farmers are great Target markets assuming you can get into working with Farmers good old boy businesses are tough to get into but they're really lucrative once you can get those contracts starting off small making parts for friends and family getting feedback from people maybe setting up an Etsy store doing something unique and posting in the forums that you might already be visiting you know the ones that don't limit third-party API access I'm not looking at anybody specifically those places are where you are already present if you come in brand new somebody that has no experience to a forum and starts posting about how they're able to offer something you're a shill and nobody wants you around you have to be assimilated into that group already and if you're not you must take the time to learn their ways because remember it's their Community not yours and when you can make it part of your community as well that's when it might be time to look at talking about what you can do to help people or showing how you solve the problem for yourself that's always a great thing to do when we look at costs there are a lot of them involved in 3D printing and the biggest one might not be what you think it's your time your time is incredibly valuable and if you don't value it you're gonna be under pricing considerably the people out there that tell you just to undercut everybody because you can are ones that don't understand a business that needs to survive you are trying to build something from scratch and just being the cheapest person out there and that being your only differentiator is not something that makes money sure if you have no cost no expenses and you're already pulling a salary from something else go ahead and charge as little as you want you really don't have anything to lose but you're not going to be able to put the time and effort into it that somebody who this is their full-time gig would be able to be mindful of that it's your part-time gig run it like a part-time Gig if you want to be your full-time gig remember dress for the job that you want not the one you have that's the guy in a polo but at least it's got branding on it damn it and take it seriously because ultimately these people are gonna make or break your business it doesn't take very many bad interactions with people to set you down a path of No Return of getting bad reviews realize for every one single star Google review that you get you need between 40 and 55 star reviews to make it effectively disappear that's a big deal considering that in the now on year seven The Three Musketeers has been open we have only amassed about 50 five-star reviews total so remember to treat everybody with respect even if they quite frankly don't deserve it when you are looking at pricing your product take into account what it looks like for you people will expect some sort of volume discount when they hit certain amounts realize your time is probably not going to go down all that much so if you are going to reduce the price you're basically cutting into your margin if your machines are not making at least four to five dollars an hour for you when they're printing you're not making any money at the end of the day now you can can build an entire process for pricing a product or you can just stick to a number that you know Works don't be afraid to adjust your pricing as it goes as we've talked about in a previous podcast which we'll link to if you are selling products right now chances are you're probably too cheap and need to look at raising your prices and I don't say that because oh I'm a capitalist and that's what I want no it's probably because you don't value your time the level that you need to because remember if you double your prices and lose half of your business you are making more money because that extra money that you just doubled is pure net profit so there's no extra labor involved and while that might sound completely counter-intuitive that's business at the end of the day if you do want to do this full-time you gotta take it as a full-time business and you gotta start treating it like one I was recently on the maker that money podcast talking about the business behind 3D scanning and something that they do there is they talk about going from the hobby to the Joby and that's what so many of us want to do because we don't want to be hold into somebody else we want to be our own bosses then you remember things like health care and what is a vacation what does that even look like I've had one in the seven years of running 3D Musketeers and we did it at the end of the Rocky Mountain rep Rap Fest if you are a patreon member you'll know we filmed a lot of content out there and if you're not a patreon PayPal or YouTube channel member you can join links are in that description down below to see the over three hours of extra content where I wore a POV camera on my shoulder we took beautiful b-roll of just our tooling around inside of Denver Colorado I spent a lot of time in this industry just burning at both ends as they say if you burn your candle at both ends you burn out a lot faster and it resulted in a lot of burnouts you gotta make sure to take care of yourself too now I've gotten pretty lucky got a pretty awesome person in my life and it's not just the cat who really does help out a lot to make sure that everything is going okay Amber will help out around the house where I need it and just generally be there for me and that matters a lot and if you're doing this on your own having somebody that you can talk to is incredibly important whether that be a significant other or most importantly to me would be a therapist they say that an average business needs two things an accountant and an attorney but I believe a small business needs a third thing which is a therapist you probably don't need an attorney right now having an accountant doesn't hurt unless you know how to do your own books but you definitely need a therapist don't let your mental health get away from you we've talked about this a couple of times on the podcast well card to one of my favorite episodes with Nick Andre talking all about imposter syndrome and how it can be a real detriment but it's not as bad as you think go watch that I think you'll enjoy it but you also need to look at what everything is costing you do you want to get one prusa or do you want to look at three or four silver sv06s for the same price that's a tough one if you have some other experience in the industry you might say I'll roll the dice on the civils knowing that I have a complete extra unit is spare and if I have parts that go bad I can salvage it from other print enters with a pro shop you're buying a machine with a warranty that's going to come with 24 7 chat support that knows what they're doing and there are a lot of people that are utilizing bamboo lab printers for their print Farms I know quite a few people that have gone full bamboo and it's working out well for them but if you have an experience like mine you're gonna regret spending that kind of money because it seems to be a bit of a hit or miss I haven't met anyone that's very middle of the road about bamboo you either absolutely love their printers or you're having a terrible time and absolutely hate them and I worry about you being on the side that I'm dealing with which is not great versus the one where a lot of others are which is it's doing fine and by the way actually I am five months deep into owning a printer from bamboo lab and I really still don't think that I've gotten a good machine we will have a review coming up next month of my first six months my bamboo lab X1 Carbon so if you're excited for that get subscribed because that's gonna be a deep video but it also comes down to maintenance how quickly and how easily can you maintain your printers you are going to have failures whether that's Blobs of Doom stringing retraction issues print heads jamming random things that will occur only when you have deadlines we talk about having more capacity than you need if you only need one printer it's good to have two if you need to it's good to have three once you get above five printers I'd like to normally have two spares because when you get five all right we're starting to talk about an actual business here and it's good to have more spares spare Hardware spare hotends spare heater spare thermistors all the common parts that go bad that's good to have those in stock ready at a moment's notice the last thing you want to do is wait a day or two for Amazon when you need something now if you are blessed and have a Micro Center near you you are able to walk in there and get parts Microcenter should really sponsor us uh if anyone's got a contact there let me know I definitely never tried traveled 15 hours round trip to go to a Micro Center nope nope that computer still functions to this day but nonetheless you have to make sure you have those parts on hand because a machine failure when deadlines are looming can be a disaster believe me I know it when we went away from Colorado I left four machines running for a tight deadline part for a client all four of those machines failed two of them were prusas sometimes the universe just isn't a fan of you and you gotta deal with it I don't like it anywhere as much as the rest of you guys do either but it is a fact of life when it comes to these businesses these are not industrial grade machines and they're not designed to do the kinds of things that we are going to do to them so you got to be prepared for things to break down and you also have to take into account the amount of Labor it's going to take to fix it that's why we like the prusa system with printed Parts I can keep an entire spare set of printed parts to build another Mark 3s or mark IV or whatever on hand so if a part breaks it's an easy thing to replace if I get a blob of Doom and it destroys my Park cooling fan great I've got spares I'll put a new one in oh it ruined my 5015 blower fan great I have a spare one of those put it in all of those things start to matter and if you can make it faster and easier for you to do you have just made more money so the cheap printers might be an option but in the long run we find that you do sometimes get what you pay for so be aware while I do really like the solvo sv06 and the sv06 Plus in fact we've coined the term poverty prusa around the shop because that's really what they feel like and our Discord calls them the small PP and the big PP because I don't know they're degenerates in a loving way we end up with really a decision do you want to roll the dice on a printer with not the best support but you're gonna be able to get two or three of them for the same price as one with premium support with a warranty that is valuing open source and has an amazing sustainability report which will card to that video on it so you guys can take a look and we'll link to the entire podcast that we did actually for a part of it interviewing Vladimir who was the author of that report which is pretty cool I think you guys will enjoy that one if you liked the main Channel video on it I don't know where I would stand as someone with 15 years experience I think I might go with civil but that's because I know what I'm getting myself into I understand the risks and I've already built up an inventory of parts and I know the upgrades that I would do if you're wondering what those upgrades will be stay tuned we have an upcoming video which will be attached with a live stream where we do the mods to make a solo sv06 and then another one for the sv06 plus run like Swiss watches because it's not going to take much to make them run much better than they already are and then maybe maybe Clippers in its future I don't know let me know what you guys think about adding Clipper to those machines and that level of maintenance should and will affect your end pricing to your customer base if you are having to work on your machines more and more and more and more that starts to be a huge problem where you're spending more time fixing your machines than you're spending making money with them I know this feeling I've been there heck I'm there right now with one of the printers in our shop it's the bamboo and I'm not a fan of it because I'm spending all of this time literally just throwing out parts and nobody likes doing that so looking further at the future of growing this business that you want to make there are some key things that you should keep an eye on one your target market who are they what do they do where do they shop how do they get their stuff two Market penetration how can you get into that market we normally recommend a stick with a market that you know best if you like doing things for laser cutters then make something that works with laser cutters if you happen to be in a system where you assist those with disabilities great utilize 3D printing to help with that and if you're a car person great there's tons of modifications that you can do to cars that will help make the lives of the drivers easier just you know be careful about risk factors manage those risks don't make Parts like bumpers for cars with 3D printers that's not safe but cosmetic modifications and spare parts and replacement parts for old cars it is what it is at some point right keep an eye on your mental health if you don't keep an eye on that mental health it's gonna creep up on you and it's gonna be a problem so start dealing with it now if you haven't already I recognize that a therapist is not cheap and come at a much higher expense than you expect but you're gonna have to trust me on this one it's a lot better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it when it comes to pricing whatever price you're thinking of it's probably too cheap take a look at all the labor that you're putting into your parts and pay yourself a fair wage and that is not 15 an hour because at 15 an hour working a full-time job you're missing all these extra benefits health benefits medical dental vision if you get any of those things paid time off that you would get in your day job on top of that thirty thousand dollar a year salary which I doubt there are many companies doing that because that's that's way too low you should pay your people more than that uh please do but if you are doing this for yourself consider a minimum pay to yourself to be twenty five dollars an hour because that can help make up for all of that lost money that you wouldn't normally get from your day job help pay for those things like insurance now if you're outside of the United States that one's not as big of a deal to you as Healthcare is probably a lot more affordable so grain of salt that of course depending on your location as for actually paying yourself if you can afford it you don't have to and you can put that money directly back into keeping the business afloat looking at hiring people looking at furthering your skills we like the Mantra of if you are not getting smarter every day you are falling behind a great YouTube channel by the way by my buddy Destin and who does some incredible videos on Amazing topics we'll link to it in the description if you want to check it out but the saying is true if you're not always getting better somebody else will instead and don't worry you don't have to be a tech whiz kid to really run a good 3D printing or maker style business I am what the IT industry considers an end user and I should never be allowed to do any major I.T stuff on my own but I still figured it out that means you can too know your strengths and know your weaknesses talk with people get yourself a mentor and don't be afraid to ask questions if you do have any questions you can email me directly YouTube 3D musketeers.com and I'll do my best to answer those and help you out with your journey to make it a buck or two with 3D printing the best time to start this business was 10 years ago the second best time to start it is right now while you might not think that you're ready if you wait until you are 100 ready you'll never be there at some point you got to make sure that the water is okay to jump in but then you just gotta send it and go for that Cannonball make sure you have some life support around you and if you do need to come up for air have them be there to help pull you out so if you need to take a break you can remember your mental health is a lot more important than you might think and you might say oh I'm a tough guy I can get through it tough guy only gets you so far tough guy and remember what you initially started your business as is not always what it will become 3D Musketeers started as a retail business in a shopping mall specifically designed to 3D scan and 3D print people that's what we originally started doing we did some service on 3D printers but that was it that was what we did as the market changed our business needed to change too and you need to make sure that you are ready to roll with those punches know how to take one because if you don't know how to take a hit you're gonna go down fast if you are looking at making your own Parts there is so much more to this including copyrights patenting trademarks Etc and if you want us to do Channel videos on on these let me know we've actually covered some of this in previous podcasts one of my favorite being an interview with Seth Polanski talking all about IP in the 3D printing industry we'll card to that video so you guys can take a look at it that one is one of my favorite interviews that we've done in a long while although really do enjoy the ones we have with the inventors as well we'll put those in the description if you want to see those the Ken Johnson and Chun UNG and Lisa Lloyd interviews those were a lot of fun you can make money with 3D printing you just gotta put some common sense into it and you might say but Grant I don't have any common sense I disagree you probably do it's probably not as much as you want believe me that's where I'm at but you can get there if I can do it so can you don't be afraid to make mistakes write them down so you can learn from them get out there stay safe don't forget to call your loved ones and as always keep making awesome have a good one what's up what's going on okay we'll go back nope what what kissed you good girl hey guys thanks so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this I've wanted to cover this topic for a while and while we've done some of it in podcasts which of course we carded to throughout the video I thought that maybe it would be good for us to have one smaller Channel video that covered it and we'll get you guys to where you wanted to go if you have any further questions remember you can email me directly links are in that description down below of course leave a comment that one's good too right below me will be the entire playlist for the making awesome podcast well over a hundred episodes like 140 episodes now or something like that and right next to that will be our previous video on the topic how to make money with 3D printing I'll see you all downloads comments and in the next one take care

Channel: 3D Musketeers

Views: 37,874

Keywords: 3d printing, crafter, maker, 3dprinting, 3dm, creators, 3dmusketeers, 3d musketeers, create, business, tech, technology, design, making, make, awesome, 3dprint, 3d print, 3d printer, 3dprinter, additive manufacturing, how to make money 3d printing, 3d printing business, small business, 3d printed profits, 3d printing for beginners, business advice, starting a business, start a 3d printing company, selling 3d prints, google reviews, know when to hold them, tlc, don't go chasing waterfalls

Id: wFSSjWb_OEY

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023